xawery

You can find BRG_cult.pbo here. Btw Berg, if my hosting the file is a problem, just drop me a line and I'll remove it. regards, X.

BEWARE, HERE BE SPOILERS! Ok, I've given the mission a go and so far, I've reached the ghost town. A few remarks/bug reports: 1. The intro is great! However, in the scene with all the impaled people the weather changes very fast from sunny to overcast/sunset. That's not a problem, actually it's quite dramatic. The problem is, when the scene fades out, the weather changes back to sunny in an instant. Just a small glitch. 2. In the chopper scene, right after Otto says his line about the bogeyman shitting himself, Hans' voiceover isn't played. The subtitles still show though. 3. The first 'retry' is just a second too soon. It interrupts Otto's line, which causes him to repeat himself. Sounds a bit strange. 4. Once you get to the docks to grab your stuff, you can notice Hans's clone walking around. Kind of confusing, cause he should be at the research camp. 5. When you're in the car with Otto, it takes him too long to respond. This makes the conversation seem a bit awkward. 6. And now for the biggest flaw: where the hell is that CAR?? It's not near the fisherman, it's not at the camp (or at least I couldn't find it...)... I had to take the bike to the mansion, where I still couldn't enter the cars. Bah. 7. After the mansion scene, something odd happened. I decided to go to the 2nd research camp by bike, but something made me stop at the village at GA 37. There, I found an empty car (which I could enter). Not far from there, a chap was standing in the tall grass, doing nothing. I couldn't talk to him or anything, so I just stole his car:) 8. Meeting Powel. If you already have a weapon in your hands (got an AK at the mansion), you don't get the shotgun. Too bad, had to reload a save to get it. 9. When you meet Hans after the hound encounter at the 2nd research camp, he shouts that the hounds are already here. Sadly, it took over a minute for the hounds to appear. This kind of destroys the sense of urgency... 10. Once the zombies attack the first research camp, I have to go to the Ghost Town. I decided to take a shorter route, which passed through the camp at GA37. There, I bumped into a pack of hounds. They were not on fire but they were indestructible... until I got out of the car. Was I supposed to meet them there? Or was that a spawning point or something similar? One last thing: I got a funky error message at the top of my screen when the dogs tried to attack me in the car. Something about fire damage. 11. The ghost town... some funky stuff there I managed to destroy the evil bastards with some good ol' road rage and a HMMV. Once the last bad guy got a taste of my tires, the screen blacked out and I got 'teleported' to some kind of ritual. Was that supposed to happen? Or did that happen because I was in a car? Phew, quite a lot of points. They may sound harsh, but let me tell you: the mission is very enjoyable Especially the voice acting, hehe. regards, X.

Excellent! Please disregard the pm's I haven't played the mission yet, only watched the intro and read the briefing. Judging by the looks of Powel, I fear that the accent of his voiceover may be somewhat inappropriate Well, I'll wait and see.

Hmm, another little problem. There are three required addons listed in the readme (Zombiemod Zombies, Overturned Bus and Graves) without a download link... Now I'm guessing that the graves and zombies are in the unified zombiepack, but I can't find the overturned bus anywhere (it was available on ofpcentral.com, but that site is down). I'm getting the following error message: Clicky! Apparantly, the vampires are also missing... I have General Barron's vampire addon, but the name of the pbo is GENB_vamps. Help! Incidentally, I did get to see the first part of the intro. Excellent stuff, the silhouettes of the impaled bodies were great. Were those 2d images btw? edit: I have the vampires now, thanks for that link:)

Will I sound obsessed if I say that I've been refreshing this page every two minutes for the past hour..?

Boohoohoo! Berghoff, come and save us!

Hmm, it seems BRG_Cult.pbo is not included in the download... The readme says it should be...

Right on! Downloading with utmost anticipation

Now bring on the mission! Can't wait to shoot zombies

Hehe, we even used the "cotton-in-mouth" technique, a la Don Corleone I have to say, we had great fun recording these lines. If you need us for anything else, just drop us a line. regards, X. Member of the Illustrious Voice Actors Guild

Mmmkay, the last lines are done! I have sent you a pm Berghoff. Enjoy the cheesiness! Regards, LoserOne + X.

Brilliant addon! Just the kind of thing to make OFP last longer. As a test, I threw together a little skirmish between Soviet and US squad. It took place in one of the forests on Nogova. October the 19th, early morning. The sun casts a reddish glow on the meandering fog. Somewhere, an owl voices its satisfaction with a succesful hunt. Leaves fall serenely as two groups of men blow each other to pieces Combined with FFUR, this is a whole new experience:)

Let me start off by saying that there is little love lost between me and the Islam. On the contrary, I consider the Islam - and any other religion, for that matter - to be little more than brain-washing based on unsubstantiated myths and a base desire for absolute 'truths'. I do not deny that religion can be practised in peace, that would be foolish: millions of people prove that every day. I do believe however that religion should be restricted to the private domain. I oppose the Islam-bashing because it stems from nothing else but xenophobia, and it draws attention away from the real problem: religion in general. Why are special (religious) schools being subsidised by the state, with taxpayers' money? Why is it necessary to have a separate paragraph in the (Dutch) constitution, dealing with the protection of religion? We all live under the rule of law, we all deserve the same protection. Why does religion warrant a separate mention? This may seem off-topic, but I wanted to clarify my views before proceeding. Now, while I may usually disapprove of this form, I believe I should answer Supah's post point-by-point. As a matter of fact, Pastors has said quite a lot of things over the past two years. Every single time he has managed to promote the 'we-they' thinking and treat the Islamic community as if it were a single, homogeneous creature. When accused of generalising the Muslims he answered: "Yes, because they do the same when they see fit". The opinions you have stated on Muslims in this thread strike me as quite similar, hence the comparison. Which is odd, seeing as (if I am to believe your political orientation) you are at the opposites of the political spectrum. I concur, believing something unconditionally is wrong, full stop. Still, it is better to base one's opinions on research than on anecdotal evidence. Incidentally, my mention of ignorance and prejudice was not a 'debating tactic' but my opinion. I'm sorry, but saying that the riots in France are caused by Jihadists while there is no proof for that (except for the shouting of individual youths, who would say anything to provoke the police) fits the definition of ignorant and prejudiced. Do you remember the British punk-movement in the early 80's? The Sex Pistols, amongst others? They wore swastika-emblems on their jackets. Why? Because they wanted to shock and provoke. Not because they were nazi's. The above paragraph left me somewhat baffled. What do you mean by 'these problems'? The riots in France? You link some isolated experience in the Netherlands to the violence in France? How? And how do you establish the link between the Islam and the behaviour of these youths, whether in the Netherlands or in France? This is a prime example of ignoratio elenchi: 1) Youths are causing problems. 2) Some of these youths were brought up with the Islam. 3) Therefore, Islam causes problems. Allow me to further illustrate the fallacy of your reasoning. I live in a relatively 'bad' neighbourhood in Haarlem, where the percentage of immigrants from North Africa and Turkey is high. I find these people to be very polite, helpful and industrious. Using your logic, I should be able to extrapolate my isolated and statistically insignificant experience with these people and superimpose it on all the North African immigrants in the Netherlands. I can then say they are all polite and friendly, just as you claim they are all lazy and have a short fuse, based upon your own isolated experience. Now, which one of us would be right? Neither, of course. Anecdotal evidence, or 'illustration by storytelling', is useless. I agree, it is your own responsibility to make the best of your life. Nobody's talking about 'giving in' to violence. It's funny how you associate the refusal to blame the events on the Islam with some sort of appeasement. They are breaking the law, and they should be stopped by all means necessary. Acknowledging the true causes of their behaviour has nothing to do with apologism. There is no debating the uselessness of their actions. Has anyone in this thread tried to defend the riots? Furthermore, you would do well to take a look at the history of immigration. The problems we are experiencing now also happened in the fifties, but then the troublemakers were Italian immigrants (I'm talking about the Netherlands btw). Maybe you would like to say that their being Catholic was the cause? Of course not. It was because they were seen and treated like 2nd rate citizens. Just like North African immigrants are being treated now.

You know Supah, for someone who considers himself left-of-centre, your opinions on the Islam sound a lot like those of Marco Pastors. As to this: I'm afraid you are not quite aware of what the situation was in the ghetto's. The police were not absent, on the contrary - they regularly harrassed the inhabitants, stopping and frisking people based solely on their appearence. I suggest you read some sociologists' reports and/or books on this matter (for example Laurent Mucchielli's Violences et insécurité. Fantasmes et réalités dans le débat français). The inhabitants of the ghetto's experienced the police actions as systematic humiliations. That, combined with low socio-economic standing, is the reason for the riots, not some supposed Islamist supremacy sentiments. The deaths of the three youths, as irrelevant and stupid they may seem (who hides in an electricity sub-station?), were a gush of oxygen that turned smouldering discontent into flaming riots. Nothing can justify such all-encompassing violence, but to blame it on the big bad Islam is a knee-jerk reaction based on ignorance and prejudice.

Hi THobson, When I read about your mission being released, I simply had to have it - it is exactly what I have been looking for since I've reinstalled OFP. A dynamic, yet not completely random mission, with a plot and a lot of freedom. Excellent! Before playing the mission I read the Read Me, thoroughly. Usually, read me's are pretty brief, containing only installation instructions and credits. Yours was quite the opposite: well-written and exhaustive. Every aspect I might have had questions about was covered. It is not often that you see properly written and spelled read me's. Well done! Now to the mission itself. Point one: performance. The first time I gave it a try was with ECP running. It was slightly sluggish at the beginning and only got worse as more soldiers appeared on screen. I then restarted the mission in combination with FFUR, but the resultant lag was even worse. I was thus forced to run Abandoned Armies on plain vanilla OFP, with the unsightly models and the utterly horrible sounds. The fact that this did not stop me from enjoying the mission is a statement in itself! Let's move on to the gameplay. You really managed to create the right atmosphere. Sneaking through the bushes, while the reddish glow of the rising sun illuminates the clouds in the east... Silhouettes of unknown soldiers appearing in the thick fog... Outstanding! I am only in the early stages of the mission, but the atmosphere is definitely set. The large amount of cutscenes certainly helps (although the voiceacting is, if you don't mind me saying so, somewhat cheesy at times). The squad management function is an excellent idea! Not only does it give you perfect control over the composition of your squad, it also makes your squad members seem like real people, with their own desires, fears, etc. It reminds of Jagged Alliance II, really. As far as I can tell, this is a great mission. Truly a unique experience. To be quite frank, I think this is what the OFP:R campaign should have been like. THobson, thanks for this great little gift!

Hi Berghoff, after a fun little crash I was forced to format my HD. Could you send me just the lines you would like LoserOne and me to do?

Brilliant! Andy Dick was excellent, as per usual While this may be rather off-topic in this thread, I would like to add something to the discussion of the supposed 'objectivity' of RTL News. I find it to be more comprehensive than NOS news (public broadcasting). I find NOS news to be often too brief, too summarising. Only the 8 o' clock edition fares better in that respect. Still, one cannot complain about its journalistic integrity. I don't think that RTL News is an opinion show in disguise. Calling it Fox News Lite is simply incorrect - in no way does it resemble the biased ramblings of Fox. Still, it is a commercial channel, so there is a fair bit of entertainment present. For example, they often round up the news with some trivial, but supposedly 'humorous' bit of news. Nevertheless, the important items are dealt with in a professional manner. When you think about it, how well can you deal with news in a quarter of an hour? It all is brief by default. My recommendation is, skip the tv news and read a paper... NRC Handelsblad, preferably:)

Actually, she was sitting in the "colored" section, at least initially. The "colored' and "white" sections were demarcated by a movable sign. The driver moved the sign behind her and demanded she vacate her seat for a white man. Only then did she refuse. Still, this detail does not detract from her courage. Especially since the driver of that bus was well-known for his antipathy towards blacks.

Now I'm confused: what other non-russian roles are there? Only the Cult Leader, right? Oh yeah, and the NPC's... Welp, perhaps we can muster some other participants, so as not to make all the roles sound similar. I'll let you know.

Too bad, I believe LoserOne had his sights set on the role of Cult Leader, hehe. There should be plenty of Russians around these forums, shouldn't there? As a last-ditch effort LoserOne and I could record the missing roles: we are renowned for our stereotypical Russian accents ( of the 'Abrahms, one chundred!' type ), and we could use some filters to make our voices sound different.

Hi Trapper, thanks for the reply. Right after posting, I gave the mission another go and indeed, if the AI move close enough to the survivors, the 'Action' radio menu can be used to call in evac. I just wasn't close enough, apparently. As to the 'smarter' survivors issue, I'm not suggesting they should all be indoors, but only some of them. I realise the zombies wouldn't be able to get to them, but that's the whole point of barricading, isn't it? Consider this: instead of putting the whole population of a town into a single large group which would then stand in the open, you could split them into several smaller groups and put some of them in buildings, and some of them in the open. This way the zombies would have enough to feed on, and the player would get his house-to-house action. Still, maybe this is too much work for such a relatively small addition. As to the helicopters, perhaps they're ferrying people to other locations, or bringing in troops from carrier class ships? Or perhaps our little fictive island lies off the west coast of Florida, and the blackhaws passing overhead are flying from Tampa to Port Saint Joe? All within the bounds of reality, hehe. Still, it's just an off the top of my head suggestion for some extra variety in the mission. Let's not get hung up on details Again - great mission!

Hey Trapper, I've downloaded the 1.0 version of your mission and I've spent a couple of hours playing. I must say, I'm very impressed! While the mission concept is fairly limited once the novelty wears off, the mission still profits from a lot of atmosphere. Especially if you turn down the brightness and gamma correction - the shouldertorches are a very atmospheric addition. It's also fun to turn down the viewing distance. Not only does it improve performance, but the zombies popping out of the mist are a perfect recepy for a heart attack. At one point I was stuck in an HMMV and the moaning zombies banging against the windows were simply terrifying Excellent! Nevertheless, I have a few points of (constructive, of course )criticism. At one point I decided to split my squad into two teams so as to be able to cover more ground. However, I wasn't able to make the distant AI to evacuate survivors. Is that impossible or have I missed something? I must add it was very immersive to split my squad in two - at one point the distant team ran into a group of zombies and engaged them. After some shooting they stopped reporting targets, so I assumed they had eliminated them all. When I tried to give them another waypoint, I got no response. Worried, I hurried to their location, only to find a demolished HMMV and zombie-soldiers trying to gnaw on my bones. In retrospection it wasn't anything special, but the whole atmosphere was so tense that I still had a ton of fun. Moving on: the only zombies I have seen were walking ones. Didn't the zombie pack include crawling undead? Or was that another project? Finally, a few words about the whole concept of the mission. It is a fresh step away from the usual zombie missions, where the zombies spawn around the player. I've taken a look at the zombie outbreak simulator at sothisisthecomic.com, and it's a great concept. However, once you know the underlying idea the mission becomes a tad boring. It IS supposed a simulator (hence the name, I guess ), I know, but perhaps you could add some extra elements to relieve the tedium that eventually sets in. Perhaps you could do something to create the idea of a large-scale evacuation of the mainland, for example groups of Blackhawks flying over the island, paying no attention to your attempts to evacuate some backwater-island. Or you could have the player hear some garbled radiotransmissions from survivors calling for help over some old military equipment. This could be quite fun - right now you have no idea which cities hold surivors; you just move from question mark to question mark. Having this kind of transmissions would add extra depth to the player's strategy: I know there are survivors at location x, but I'm closer to location y. Should I go to location y first and take the risk of survivors at x being slaughtered in the meantime, or should I go straightaway to x, ignoring the possibility that there are survivors at y who weren't lucky enough to obtain a radio? And now my last suggestion, although I don't know how feasible it is. Would it be possible to have some survivors hiding inside builiding? Right now they're just grouped outside to be slaughtered. When you enter a town, you know immediately whether there are survivors or not. If you would setpos survivors into buildings, the player would have to perform door to door searches, which would be much more immersive. Of course, I don't know how compatible this would be with the scripts the mission runs, or whether this is possible at all. Overall, I have to say this is a great mission. I love the dynamic aspect. Well done!

How about lack of evidence? I'm glad we still live in a society where you need proof to arrest someone. Just because he wasn't incarcerated in the first place doesn't meen the AIVD lost all intererst in him... on the contrary. They let him go, observed him, and when he commited a crime (trying to obtain automatic weapons) they arrested him, along with a number of other suspects. Over all an effective operation, wouldn't you agree? Denoir: A similar policy is followed here in the Netherlands, or at least in my county. I can't say its results are as disastrous as you present them. Sure, there is a number of odd-balls roaming the streets, but they don't harras anyone and people are either sympathetic toward them or simply indifferent. It's been this way for years now and people have grown accustomed to them. They are actually a part of the urban folklore - the elderly crossdresser, the cursing lady and the grandma who insists on singing Sinterklaas songs all year long It sounds weird, but people have accepted them.

Thanks Berg, we had great fun recording the parts. I must say, your cornyness is unsurpassed Can't wait for the mission! If you need any betatesting, you know how to reach me...

Well, seeing as the NOPD apparently has experience with beating up civilians, I think you just might be right On a more serious note, has anyone seen the footage of that beating? There is a link in the quoted article, and I'm sure it has been all over the news (at least it was here in Europe). Having seen it, I find the following quote particularly disturbing: What circumstances would justify three policemen holding one elderly man pinned to the wall, and beating him repeatedly in the back of the head? Is this a "justified reaction" to public intoxication? Gah.