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galzohar

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Posts posted by galzohar


  1. For now splitting AI to smaller groups and not using the waypoints but rather calling the CQB function in the onAct field of the last waypoint with a low interval (2 seconds) helps.

    I also set the AI QRF to enable the reinforcement feature, but I'm not sure how much it helps, they still often seem to prefer clearing buildings in order rather than engaging known enemies.

     

    Basically I find the biggest problems with CQB right now are, in this order:

    1. Too much priority for building clearing over fighting known enemies.

    2. AI move too close together, and script seems to send the entire group into the buildling even if it's small. Leaving some AI outside would be safer and faster, and need to find some way to keep them spaced. Seems like when you send 4 men into a 4 different building positions and they all choose the same (sometimes only) entrance, then they all stack up trying to enter at the same time, which makes them way too vulnerable.

    3. Search order is a bit predicable. Order of buildings could be slightly randomized (in cases where distances are similar), and dynamically change the order to prioritize clearing buildings around known enemies first, getting back to the original buildings order later. Buildings near known enemy contacts should probably re-enter the list of buildings that need clearing, even if they were already cleared.


  2. Hi,

     

    I tried using this as this seems like the only proper way to make AI search through buildings properly, and encountered some issues:

     

    1. AI in CQB often get stuck, and they won't move until the whole team is out, even if only 1 AI is stuck. I'd consider some unstuck functionality or a timeout to stop waiting for the stuck AI.

     

    2. In CQB it seems to send the entire group into a building, even if it's small, making #1 occur even more often for large groups.

     

    3. In CQB AI seem to prioritize clearing buildings rather than engaging enemies. I think enemies should be the #1 priority, and they've been eliminated and their buildings cleared, go back to the search pattern.

     

    4. CQB search pattern seems a bit too consistent, AI often search buildings in the same order.

     

    5. AI in vehicles with CQB task/waypoint won't drive (they'll get in the vehicle if they're far enough, but then it won't move). Must use a regular "get out" waypoint followed by a CQB waypoint.

     

    6. It's not clear to me why there are both waypoints and modules, and what's the desirable way to work with these functions. The waypoints seem to be more limited, but the modules can't be chained to give a next task once the current one is complete.

     

    7. Could really use some other useful tasks, mostly:

    a. Ambush: Set up defensive positions in stealth mode until ready to engage, and complete when all known enemies within ambush area have been eliminated.

    b. Hold them off: Set up defensive positions and prioritize survival and delaying the enemy over rushing into combat and getting the kills (and killed). Good for when longer firefights are needed and the AI is expected to be outnumbered and/or expecting reinforcement/support. Allow some scripted/trigger condition to determine completion.

     

     

    Hopefully at least some of those won't be too difficult to fix. This mod does some great things and I think it has a lot of potential to improve further.

    Thanks!


  3. If you think a faction is what will make or break a game mode you should re-inspect current and historical status of servers. If a game mode is crap then no aesthetics are going to help. If a game mode is cool but has many abuse-able features that don't get tweaked quickly enough, it will die fast even if the concept was cool to begin with. And also if it's not tuned properly to the current status (number of players, available time of players, etc). End-game had many ways to abuse it pretty badly and was not scaling well for smaller number of players, and it didn't get the required effort to keep it playable (and even with major effort, some design flaws that can be abused are not simple to fix without breaking something else).

    • Thanks 1

  4. On 11/15/2020 at 9:21 AM, specialsmith said:

    I guess this great looking mission from @galzohar checks many of the boxes.
     

    Dynamic Take And Secure

     

    It's a much simpler version than what you are describing (no buying/building, no revive, no respawn) but I think in some case this can be an advantage for the kind of gameplay you're looking for. For example, balancing of gear is much easier this way.

     

    As my community haven't played in a long time, I hope no Arma updates broke anything.

    There is also RHS and IDF mod support (optional), but again updates could have broken it since I made it.

    So make sure to test before your game night!


  5. Did anyone hack something to make ALIVE use the new waypoints? Otherwise I'll try pull something off myself, but was hoping someone would have beaten me to it.

    Currently from a quick test it looks great but unfortunately AI don't get in buildings before combat, only once they spot an enemy (and in my tests only to hunt me inside a building, but I didn't test much yet).

    They do seem a bit aggressive though for getting into your building, which makes them a bit predictable. Do they also try in some cases to get a firing position into the building from the outside rather than charge in to make them less predictable?

     

    Also, what happens to taskGarrison if the unit gets killed/deleted before it reaches its target? There seems to be no null checking? Would this fail or somehow work? Also maybe a timeout would be appropriate (for example if unit might loop, or get into contact, or get a different order by some other script)?


  6. I play only veteran so I can only play what the veteran server is running. Also most of the week only 1 server has high population so you must play that.

     

    Also, when the veteran server was populated the game was just going back and forth around the same few central objectives. Seems like unless one team is much better than the other or one of the teams starts to quit nobody is going to get past the chokepoints.


  7. You don't think that taking hours to find any enemy player is a problem? And that players quitting as soon as a new game starts just because of this is also a problem? The first 2 times I tried this I joined a game in progress which was more reasonable, with cp being generated at a good (even too good) rate. Then I had a game that just started and with just a few players and it took over 2 hours just to capture a few zones, during this time the entire enemy quit and some new players re-joined and eventually it was late at night and I had to go, being nowhere near the middle of the map yet. Basically a team that had more players playing longer and fighting boring AI for more hours will have a serious advantage, that is if the server doesn't become empty in the process.

     

    In the end I think the game duration should be something that an average player can afford to spend, and not that 1 match would have the entire team get replaced by new players several times before it's finished, if it ever gets finished without requiring one of the teams to go to bed first.

     

     

    As for spawning, I noticed it depends on where you come from, but it's still a very specific position, which could be completely exposed and spawn camped. I don't think anyone likes having spawn camping in a game. If we get some reasonable radius around the current spawn point to choose a more concealed position to spawn in it would be better. Also, if you can come from multiple directions, we could be saved the trouble of deploying twice by having those options available in advance (although that's just an annoyance, not a major issue).

     

    Regarding difficulty, seeing AI on map can be fixed by mission scripting if it's important for this mission's gameplay. Friendly players are already appearing by script. I also don't like kill messages and score board (as it lets you easily confirm your kills which hurts realism without a real gameplay benefit), that's why I'd prefer elite/custom (where custom is basically just elite with VonID, stamina bar and stance indicator enabled).


  8. Some of the major issues I found so far:

     

    1. Most servers are on regular. The veteran server has very few players (is there only 1?). Please make the first server veteran/elite/custom, so that people who just choose the 1st server will get that... If someone really wants to play regular he can manually pick a different one.

     

    2. For small player counts (and probably even high counts) it takes forever to get the PvP game started. There are way too many zones that it takes hours to capture enough to actually reach the point of fighting the enemy. This basically makes the game only somewhat fun when joining late, and everyone quit when a new game starts.

     

    3. Early you get almost no CP at all, while late game you get a very generous amount. There should be reasonable basic CP generation even with 0 zones.

     

    There should be significantly less zones and each zone should count for more (for both #2 and #3).

     

    4. The whole rearming process is annoying and encourages abuse. You have to either pay for full arsenal or try to figure out which ammo crates contain what you need and start chasing them around the base. Considering that you didn't loot anything temporary before you died and can actually acquire last loadout (which is absurdly cheap as someone can loot your titans and you can duplicate your loadout that way). One possible solution is go to arsenal on every respawn but have to pay for anything you take (and of course can store some presets for cheap/expensive/specialist loadouts to get done with it more quickly). The cost will have to be added to the arsenal though. This will make every weapon and ammo spawned cost something. Some very basic alternatives (crewman, rifleman, pilot) should be free. Basic AT should be cheap if neutrals keep spawning armor. Spawning ammo crates should be left for field rearming (and ammo shouldn't cost much, while weapons should cost more). If you keep spawning ammo crates at base as a cheap way to rearm multiple times, at least don't spawn them 100m away...

    The above issue also results in very little weapon variety, as it's too much trouble (and early also costly) to keep grabbing a different weapon than the default, not to mention getting more ammo for it. Best way is to just drop your mags/nads/fak, reload last loadout and pick up fresh mags back, which is annoying and limits to your the default weapon. Also, some basic vanilla weapons are missing and only a DLC alternative is available. Mostly bluefor have the DLC EBR but are missing the vanilla one...

     

    5. Respawn system is very problematic. I couldn't figure out the rules 100% yet, but it seems you can spawn straight into the enemy line of sight both when attacking and even more so when defending. This makes spawn camping a necessity at some point. Fast travel to a zone an enemy is attacking should spawn you outside just like when attacking. Spawning should be further away and you should have some freedom in selecting the exact spot. Maybe even make it much further but spawning transport vehicles to your position much cheaper.

     

    6. Zones are very large, which results in lots of hide and seek. Making them much smaller will make it more obvious where you need to go to defend/attack. It doesn't force all fighting to be inside the zone... But it'll make everyone more focused on reaching a more specific area.

     

    7. Weird stuff happen when both teams focus on just attacking. If there are enemies in the zone you are supposed to defend, capturing should be disabled until you also clear the defended zone from enemies. Smaller zones will also help with that.

     

    8. Neutral zones have a ton of AI but they're very bad. This makes for some very strange firefights... Not sure if it's due to server being veteran (as opposed to elite) or if the mission specifically lowers their skill further. Haven't noticed yet if friendly AI is as problematic, if they are then they're pretty worthless except for some guided AT/AA which can't miss anyway.

     

    There's probably much more but those are the biggest game breakers I could think of right now.

    • Thanks 1

  9. Currently we have no list of cover-friendly/unfriendly objects. The creation of cover positions around edges of map objects is fully governed by an engine algorithm. We are aware of the issue that sometimes the cover positions get created on rather inappropriate places (traffic signs, fences).

     

    So it's really limited to just map objects, and absolutely ignores editor-placed / script-spawned objects? :(


  10. Check out the DTAS events on Arma 3 PvP community Steam group:
    http://steamcommunity.com/groups/arma3pvpcommunity

    While the objective is "not realistic", it is the closets representation of a realistic objective I could get without adding overly realistic elements that don't add anything useful to gameplay (that is, objectives that would create an incredibly imbalanced and non-competitive mission).

     

    You can find some videos in my channel:
    http://www.youtube.com/galzohar


  11. Well it's always going to be something. For some people it's the performance cost of All The Things. For others it's the lack of enterable buildings. For others it's the lack of furniture. It wouldn't matter whatever BIS's approach is: this thread would exist in some form :/

     

    Of course, but at least with enter-able buildings the gameplay would have been better, so more people would be spending time playing and less spending time complaining. So while not perfect, it would make the situation better :)

     

    Does Tanoa actually perform better than Altis? For some reason, I highly doubt it.

    It seems more like a manpower issue (as stated by BIS) than performance, at least in most cases. They specifically said that they make buildings non-entrable so that they don't feel like they have interiors missing, which really is just making things worse than they were on Altis.


  12. Not having enter-able buildings is a big shame.

     

    While it wasn't very pretty to have no furniture in Altis buildings, it was really much better than, say, Chernarus, where buildings simply cannot be entered.

     

    No furniture takes away from the immersion and realistic looks.

     

    No ability to enter takes away from being able to simulate a realistic combat situation.

     

    The Altis approach was much better I would say, considering the reasons for me and most people i play with to buy this game in the first place.

     

    Besides, not being able to enter a building can be argued to be even less immersion and less realistic looks than having the building enter-able with no furniture.

     

    Overall, I think the approach they took for Tanoa is an absolutely horrible idea, making the not-so-great situation we had on Altis much much worse on Tanoa.


  13. I think we should have both the ability to define multiple custom classes, and the ability to change custom settings as a logged in admin while the game is running.

    When you want to have 2 presets available for a server you will want the multiple classes, and when you want to try out a new option or change something without restarting the server, you will need the manual edit while server is running.

    Ultimately, it would be best if those custom configurations could be edited and saved by the logged in server admin (optionally disabled by server config).

    • Like 2

  14. The main script with its sub-functions is bit hard to read, because in most cases it simply forwards those parameters to another function, and it's hard to say what that function might expect.

     

    With the locations, for example, I had to do trail and error until I sort of figured out what the parameters were supposed to be.

     

    As for the bug, it was reported by a friend, I will try to reproduce it by myself and create a proper bug report.

     

    Other than bug fixing and more detailed documentation of the sub-functions, the most useful addition would be to have more control over the black/white list of units while the spectator script is active (in my case, exclude units as they get killed and moved to the "waiting for next round" area). Right now it's impossible to tell which ones are alive and playing and which are "dead (in my mission means they are in the waiting area and have some variable set).

     

    For example, allow having a condition function as a parameter instead of the side whitelist array, so instead of passing [side player], I could pass a function that will take unit as argument and return true if they unit should be spectate-able and false if it shouldn't. The script should then use this function periodically to check which units should be removed/added to the whitelist.


    I see that the feedback tracker only allows bug reports. Is there a way to add a feature request/task that is not a bug?


  15. I've added support for the "End Game" spectator script in DTAS (first person only while spectating, and free camera at the planning phase to get a view of the objective), but there are currently some issues which make me think twice before releasing a version that uses the new script. From the DTAS side of things, it seems like everything is working as good as it can work given the current "End Game" spectator script implementation and interface.

     

    See the spectator script forum thread for more details:

    https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/185591-end-game-spectator-feedback/

     

    Hopefully those issues will be fixed and I can release the version using the much nicer spectator script.

    • Like 2

  16. What is the meaning of the first parameter? It seems like it must always be player? I couldn't find anything else that did anything.

     

    Is it possible to set the position of the free camera with a script?

     

     

    Yet another question:
    How would you add locations to the locations menu?

     

    And another:
    How to stop the spectator using a key press? Currently the only way to stop the spectator script seems to be by calling the function with the "terminate" parameter, but adding a keyUp event handler to display 46 seems to not take effect while spectator display is active.

    • Like 1

  17. Is there a way to whitelist/blacklist specific units? It seems like only side is an option.

    In round based modes, you would want only the actually playing players to be spectate-able, so you don't have to cycle through all the "dead" players who are in the waiting area, waiting for next round to start.

    It would be nice if there was a global array or a function that one can call that will update that whitelist for an already running spectator.

     

    Alternatively, can allow us to set a predicate function that the spectator script will use to determine if a unit is a valid target for spectating.

    Something like:

    fnc_canSpectate =
    {
      private ["_unit"];
      _unit = _this select 0;
     
      ((side _unit) == side player) && (_unit getVariable ["isPlaying", false])
    }
     
    [fnc_canSpectate] call BIS_fnc_update_spectator_condition_function;
    

  18. Hi,

     

    Any plan to support the new spectator mode from bohemia?

    That is, when a player is spectating, he also hears the same things the spectate target is saying and hearing. That way you can have a better idea of what is going on around him. Should also still hear stuff around your player if he's still alive, at least as an option (toggle-able by script), so that in round-based game modes you can talk to others who also wait for the next round to start, while also hearing what's going on with the player on which you set your spectator.

     

    Thanks!

    • Like 1

  19. Why was elite removed? It was almost perfect for hardcore-realism play, only missing the VONID enabled setting to help figure out who is spamming the VON.

    Though it could use also stamina bar and stance indicator enabled, as hiding them does not really help making the game more hardcore-realistic.

     

    Veteran has too many "casual player" options enabled, and I think it actually hides the stamina bar.

     

    Right now I am using custom with just stamina bar, stance indicator, vonid and camera shake (I suppose camera shake is the only one where "enabled" is the more difficult option?).

     

    Also, I wonder why the option to configure the specific options of "custom" was disabled on dedicated servers. Admin-configured "custom" presets should be possible to change and save/load from the menu (so that you can have several custom presets).

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