Grimm

sYaqxGgvp-s Fight Extension is actually in early alpha stage and will be released by the end of the year 2010 7cOB5RU1KME Commander's gameplay Easy-to-use Fight Extension creates short-time high intensity battles, to which 1 to 100+ players can participate in solo, coop or versus mode. Fight Extension is automatically detecting the game mode and the number of players while randomly selecting amid a range of scenarios, each procedurally generating daytime, weather conditions, starting locations and goals, all over the island, from a “strategic/operational†to a “tactical†level. Nevertheless, Fight Extension is built on a “download & play†frame, so no adjustment or setting is required. Various action levels Fight Extension proposes different points of view, each having their own prerogatives and being empowered accordingly: commander, team leader and trooper. The commander rank allows a strategic vision and the ability to call for operational support such as paratroopers’ support, artillery coverage or combat helicopters’ assistance. Team leaders and troopers will enter the battle from their own perspectives. Whatever the selected role, players will be immersed in a war field involving many combat groups and vehicles. Different levels of AI AI, allowing coop or solo play, will play non-human roles. The commander AI allows to calling for firing supports, aiming specific targets and participating to the battle with different states of mind such as “aggressiveâ€, “cautiousâ€, “trickyâ€, etc. The team leader AI will aim at completing his own goals among basic military tasks : attack / hold / support / meet with / … A network centric warfare system Fight Extension is designed on the network centric warfare principle, creating a multi-level communication network between commanders and units. However, if the mobile HQ is destroyed, this network no longer exists. Within the frame of communications that are secured, the commander can call for fire support and team leaders receive commands, while AI units get moral bonuses that influence their aptitudes and reactions such as their ability to resist or to flee, generating different behaviors (desertion / panic / dispersal). Mods Fight Extension is working on Arma 2 Vanilla and Arma 2 Combined Operations. It is 99% compatible with the community mods (including Ace). No Arrowhead standalone adaptation is foreseen at the moment. It can be also very easily moded. For testing purpose, it took me less than half an hour to put all the hexagon mod, including vehicles, in the game (just had to lightly modify some specific data sheets). Islands Tchernarus, Takistan, Duala and Panthera (IceBreakr's) are actually planned. Release Date Fight Extension will be released by the end of the year 2010. Analysis : this man just died, he probably lost his group leader and his group suffered huge losses. This explains the low moral. The fact that, moreover, the remaining men may be outside the commanding network could easily explain why the survivors are 'fleeing in panic' ; in this state, even if they manage to go back in the network, the commander can not (temporarly) give orders to this formation. My deployment begins. You can see that some units are out of my network and won't receive my orders anymore, except my Recon forces, west and north-west, who have the special ability to go out of the network without being impacted. Notice also the detected enemy artillery fire, red marker west from the main objective.

Thanks gents for your comments, Azroul => 1. FE has some very huge script loops, but it seems to be ok (can be played almost everywhere in Chernarus with middle end PC) since I take care of killing scripts as soon as they're useless. 2. Faction sizes. It's up to you! FE is already completly moddable, meaning you can easily tailor forces like you want. For example, for my tests in Chernarus, I'm using for OPFOR 3 groups of tanks (3 units each), 2 groups of mech. inf., 3 groups of infantry, 2 groups of scouts (2 uaz each), 2 snipers with their spotters, and of course HQ and commander. half of the troops can be played by humans, but it can be set too. I made a demo in Isla Duala where forces were different, ... etc. 3. Mount/unmount (right click on checkpoints) seems to be working quite nicely since the last patch, but I didn't check it very far atm. My main concern, about this point, was when the AI wasn't commanded by human player : I had to set some "safety distance" from detected enemies and objectives to order scripted dismount. I lost some hair while working on this. :)

Hi Zapat, thanks for your support. I'm actually coding the commander AI. Actually, the commander AI is quite simple : it aims the center of the battlefield with some very simple rules, and orders player units and AI units to go overthere. I programed it for debug and testing purposes, while I was coding the main engine. Now I'm working on it : how it perceives the battlefield, the surrounding fights, how it reacts in real time to known threats (it doesn't cheat), how it uses fire support, what kind of orders will it give to subordonate AIs and players (if you play as trooper or group leader, you certainly don't want to guard a point until the end of the game, ie : orders given to players must be entertaining and realistic at the same time... a difficult task, but not an impossible one). FE is actually playable as commander, versus a "stupid" AI, or as human commander vs human commander, or as group leader/trooper, but this last part is not really interesting atm. I will release a first close beta as soon I've made consistent progress in commander AI. I'm aiming at the middle of the upcoming month, but I don't want to put on myself unnecessary pressure ;)

CarlGustaffa => Your system sounds really clever and develops the 'loop' approach I was talking of. But I think something much more simple could be done when JIP : 1. Local : detecting JIP player, and activating global trigger 2. Global (via trigger) : server searches the right values for weather/date, and send them through network, then activates a 'synch trigger' on clients 3. Local : synch trigger activated. Clients update.

Thanks 5133 :) I will definitely need beta testers when the closed beta's out, so if you are interested, you'll be welcome on board (I won't release a 'public' beta, as I like things to be the cleaner as possible when going out). I'm actually working on the core engine, I would like to release the beta on the end of november (fingers crossed ^^).

You're synchronizing from the server's datas, right? So you just have to use the 'date', 'fog' functions ... (etc) to get the server datas, then send them through network with publicvariables, then activate a trigger on the client side in order to regularly update the whole thing. But once again, detecting JIP then sync with server is more elegant, and less heavy.

Thanks guys. Still a long way to go, a lot of minor bugs and some enhancements to do, but as you can see in the second vid the game is now quite playable, even if a lot of features are still missing.

Nephris1 = > If you don't want to get involved in the "JIP business" and still want to sync weather and time, you must do an infinite loop, regularly synchronizing clients with server.

Hi guys, First post updated with a video showing some commander's gameplay. KeyCat => Thank you! killjoer3f => Fight Extension is a kind of "combat missions generator" more than a "warfare" : - You have no economy : you don't have to build bases or to buy units. - You have some huge amount of "missions layers", meaning : * All the strategic objectives (commander role) are procedurally generated (random with complex generation rules), leading to 3 main types : 1. You and your enemy have the same objectives, all shown on the map, or shown step by step, each time you reach one (but types Hold/ Secure, etc. can be different) 2. You have different secondary objectives, and a same main objective 3. You or you enemy don't have any objective, and you must stop your opponent advance (while your opponent must fullfill its own objectives). * Group leaders and troopers have a different layer when the AI is commanding. They're told to secure some location, to wait for another allied unit to combine forces for assault, to support another unit's advance, etc... All these dynamically generated layers are producing a quite cool 'real life' combat effect.

Hi guys, thanks again for the nice feedback. :) I will update this post probably tomorrow with a 'step by step' gameplay sequence, playing the commander role and including unshown new features, as some MP testing session is scheduled this evening with a friend. Some vids will follow later, with gameplay on group leader and trooper's sides.

Many more units types. In fact, arrowhead focuses on asymetric fights, while ArmA II (Co) is more balanced. And you have Chernarus, which is a beautiful map (sometimes laggy, nothing's perfect). Moreover, you will have access to a lot of missions that are restricted for Arrowhead users, as they don not have all the content of the game. Worth ten bucks, in my opinion.

thx Fox, I'll wait then :)

Hi Mandoble, OFPEC seems to be offline actually. Is there a way to download your addon? (I had to format my hd, back to the download industry again... :) )

Yeah, sorry about that, I made it clearer now, under the vid. FE is currently in alpha stage, and we have already good times playing it, but its shape isn't fitting my standards for an actual relase. A soon as it's on beta, volunteers for testing will be more than welcome :) . I will update this topic regularly with gameplay vids, to show you some specificities and to share the fun.

I've been thinking about FE concept for a year, and I'm coding it quite intensively since July, so your first feedbacks are quite important to me. Thanks to all for your support :)

well said Eric... :D

Thanks, hope you'll enjoy it ;)

No, it aims to be relatively realistic, so you don't have to build bases. Just to deploy from your starting location and to fullfill your objectives.

Hello everyone, I get some "strange" issue, at least in my opinion. I'm working in a mission in editor preview. At begining, no problem, everything runs smooth. About one hour later, sometimes (not verified on all cases), I have huge lag (5 fps max...) which doesn't seem to stop. But surprisingly, it's just on "real world view" : I mean, when I'm looking at the map, everything runs okay, my units in high command are moving quite fast and responding quickly. Could someone establish a diagnostic? My pc is quite old and I know that vista 32 is not the best system to run arma 2. But my surprise comes from the huge difference of fps during the mission in 3D view... Here are my (poor) specs : 6600 2 procs 240 GT (1 Gb) 3 gb ram Running arma 2 with cpuCount = 2 and maxmem 2048, in normal settings (no post processing and very low AA).

About "simple pics" : having worked in the game industry, I can tell you for sure that it is not so simple to do that on a work in progress, as the developers do not work on the entire game, but on some separate elements that haven't been put together yet. These elements are really put together during alpha stage.

Amazing! Congratulations for this huge work! :) (Edit : ... and cocorico! ;) )

Nice compilation of tutorials. Thanks! :)

Günter is perfectly right. It's been a few years since I began to code, and I continue to make "modules". Meaning : - instead of making a huge mission, do little ones, juste with one effect you want to test. For example : "I want AI to spawn next to me" ; "I want an helicopter to come and land there"; "..." ... Then, for each problem, make tests and search in the biki or in the forums. People around here are really willing to help. So you will be able to ask clearly "How I make AI spawning", "how I make an helicopter landing?". Each time, you must say if you working for MP or SP, as Arma engine behaves differently, due to locality. Edit : I hope (an I'm quite sure) that nobody here will accept to be paid for help. We're a community, not sellers ;-)

Leclerc? (Please? ^^)

Just tested it a few hours ago. That is just brilliant!