dmos

I'd like to make an MP Seize mission, very much like those included with the game. There is a Seize module under Gameplay Modes, but after a lot of googling, I haven't found how to use it. How do we use this module? Or maybe there is some material on it that I haven't found?

Spent a good part of my evening on this. Didn't find any cargo drop scripts that are to the point so made this. _carrier = _this select 0; // Probably the plane making the drop off _dropItem = _this select 1; // Item you want to drop _velFactor = 0.75; // The item being dropped will have a portion of the carrier's speed (but just for a bit; it won't continue flying or anything) _carrierPos = getPos _carrier; _dropPoint = +_carrierPos; _dropPoint set [2, (_dropPoint select 2) - 0.5]; _dropVel = velocity _carrier; _dropVel = [(_dropVel select 0) * _velFactor, (_dropVel select 1) * _velFactor, -10]; sleep 0.15; _parachute = "ParachuteMediumWest" createvehicle _dropPoint; _dropItem setDir getDir _carrier; _dropItem setPos _dropPoint; _dropItem attachTo [_parachute, [0,0,0]]; _parachute setpos _dropPoint; _parachute setVelocity _dropVel; _parachute setDir (getDir _carrier) + 180; sleep 2; // all this mascarade below because if left just like this objects like ammo boxes get burried or something waitUntil {sleep 0.4; ((getPos _dropItem) select 2) < 0.5}; _dropItemPos = getPos _dropItem; _dropItemPos set [2,0]; _dropItem setPos _dropItemPos; detach _dropItem; put this in your mission directory (ex C:\Users\[-username-]\Documents\ArmA 2\missions\[-your mission-].Zargabad\). Name it something smart, give it an .sqf extension (ex: cargoDrop.sqf). You execute the script as follows: _thisIsAScriptHandle = [name_of_your_plane_or_heli, name_of_item_to_drop] execVm "cargoScript.sqf" Of course both – the carrier and the cargo – have to exist somewhere on the map when you run the script. TIP: you can put all that execVM stuff above into a waypoint's OnAct field. Hope this helps anyone, check out my sandbox where I'll use this Cheers -dmos

Wrong :/ cd-key is encrypted. Text to hex conversion won't work. Seems like only the installation process can produce a valid "KEY" value. Manual entry won't work.

I intend to buy a digital copy of Combined Ops. Through Steam probably. I'm buying it just to play online, and I was wondering if the steam version poses problems with Six Updater or mods or something like that? I've heard that steam versions and dvd copies don't always act the same. In short is it a good idea to buy from steam? Cheers :) I'll meet you ingame soon

I've just bought Combined Ops from Sprocket. But downloading is slow and since the sprocket version might have problems with patching and such I've copied my friend's installation with all the registry keys and everything. The problem is that I can't figure out how to replace my friend's cd-key with mine. After this thread, I should convert my cd-key to hex as a dword hex value (???): So I've tried like a dozen ASCII to HEX converters but all of them give me 24 hex pairs, whereas the cd-key should be 15 hex pairs (my friends cd-key is written that way and the already mentioned post seems to imply that too. So how does ARMA2 encode the cd-key? I'm not getting something. Some help Would be really appreciated.

Also it's pretty weird that a cd-key which is 24 characters gets downsized to 15 hex pairs, whereas I'd imagine it would be a pair per character. Does that indicate that cd-key is not in ascii? Maybe it's encrypted, which would be weird. Or not the whole of the cd-key is used. Does anyone have any insight on this? ---------- Post added at 04:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:32 PM ---------- That's comforting, but still. Due to my bandwidth situation it will take quite some time until I've downloaded installation and patches.

thanks! I've just purchased through Sprocket and downloading now

Great news. Could you expand on the extra "fiddle" in merging A2 and OA? I'll try searching the forums.

All revenue to the devs? I didn't know that about Sprocket, that's great. thanks for the info. Does Sprocket give the same problems as Steam? Could you tell me a bit more about those problems?

Deep Sandbox Inspired and guided by thomsonb's brilliantly done sandbox series. Deep Sandbox aka Deep Sand is a single-player dynamic mission based in Zargabad. Requires Operation Arrowhead. 90% 95% 98% dynamic mission. 100% dynamic combat. Most gameplay aspects are random or dynamic. Uses the awesome UPS (Urban Patrol Script) by Kronzky! As result enemy groups behave in a much more realistic and immersive manner. Respawn on death in a dynamic way. There's a twist ;) Randomly placed caches containing weapons, equipment and ammo. Contents also completely random. There are 2 stashes that are bigger than average and they are landmarked by huge radars. The rest of the stashes are 25 in force and they're completely dynamically placed all over the map. (TIP: There's little chance of finding one in the middle of the city and they often have H-barrier cubes surrounding them for cover. Check image further down). NEW Completely Vanilla compatible, but if you want the most out of Deep Sand, use mods posted just below. Content supported by Deep Sand (if you don't use it, you will still be able to play Deep Sand out of the box): The awesome RH weapon mods (following packs: HK416 , M4/M16 and the PDW mini-pack ). ACEX-RU (the Russian Army) – highly recommended, adds Russian Desert groups. ACE, ACE-X. [*] You are NOT a lone soldier. You command a small 4 man fireteam. As you play you can accept encountered friendly units into your squad. [*] Self and teammate healing (following thomsonb's example). Upcoming features: This is you. There are over two dozen dynamically placed weapon stashes. Two of them are marked by radars and are slightly bigger than average. Not only infantry. You also have the less frequent vehicles and planes. Again radar marking a stash. You can also see a civilian car parked there. I've taken thomsonb's brilliant "carpark" script. I hope that's alright with him. A script like that is waay beyond my scripting capacities. An example of a dynamically placed weapons cache. Note that usually they're not on roads. Night time post mortem insertion, you can see teammates' parachutes in the distance. Time/weather randomization is geared so that a reasonable part of missions would be at night. Already mentioned time/weather randomization is centered around you enjoying the whole range of atmospheric effects and settings. It would be really cool if you would join in making this sandbox and be a co-author. Help with scripting and ideas would be VERY useful! Feel free to use any of my code and add yours where you like. It would be great if you would share your improvements and tweaks.:chef: Big Thanks to: Thomsonb for his already mentioned Flashpoint sandbox. It gave me hours and hours of fun and inspired me to do Deep Sand. I learned alot from his code and Deep Sand has his great "carpark" script. Krozky for his awesome Urban Patrol Script. DOWNLOAD code here (Update 6, June 17) Armaholic mirror (Update 6, June 17): - Deep Sandbox (Zargabad) Changelog: Have fun! -dmos

Sorry for the inactivity on my part. I read through your ideas and really liked most of them :) To be honest I'm starting to loose interest in single player. At the end of the day it just doesn't cut it. And unfortunately with my copy it's the only option. That's due to my financial standing. I do have plans on continuing this little project, but in about a week I'm leaving for the summer so things might come to a halt. If anyone would like to continue this project, you have my blessing. Yes, Jedra, I'm looking at you :) Give me a shout when you have a release and I'll add a redirection to your thread. or maybe it's possible for us to co-author this thread? Anyway good luck with that. If I don't have time to check up before I leave, which isn't very likely but still, – I wish you all the best. Btw: jedra, I made a quick and simple cargo drop script that I posted in these forums not long ago. I didn't have time to implement it, but here it is, maybe you'll have use of it.

As long as you can reference the plane right, it doesn't matter how you got it :) by the way if youre talking about spawnVehicle function, keep in mind it outputs an array – not a vehicle name (i think vehicle name is the first element of the array though). Look it up on biki

managed to break my installation. might take some time to work out

Thanks for suggesting those weapon packs. I'll most likely include them soon :) And I really want to add the option to play as a lone wolf or just a team of 2, but I can't think of a way to provide configuration for the mission, because I don't want to use dialogs like for example thomsonb did. I'll probably soon provide a settings file together with the unpacked mission, but then you have to play through the mission editor or at least use it to "Export to Single-Player Missions" after setting changes. Any suggestions anyone? ---------- Post added at 05:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 PM ---------- Kyle, what's a CTD? as I understand your game crashed right? you might have a conflict between your mods. Sorry I don't have a lot of experience with this. It's think it's unlikely that it has been caused by the mission. Are you sure you have your mods in the right order, etc? Good luck with that. My game was randomly planting because of sound mods, dunno why :/ but I just disabled them. Try leaving just the essential mods. The respawn, works sort of like this: you "reincarnate" into a guy sitting in the heli and teammates get teleported in it too, unless they're dead. It's the same teammates. Now that you mentioned it I think I should make it so that injured teammates would be healed. There's an annoying little bug where if you die and some of your teammates are in any kind of vehicles, they don't get teleported into the chinook. It's probably not hard to fix it, but it doesn't bother me that much. Now the other problems you've mentioned are related to the UPS script. It manages the AI and corpse removal. The problem where AI becomes unresponsive is oh so annoying. It concerns units that you have accepted into the fireteam. And corpse removal should happen after 10 min or so, but I once noticed that a dead body disappeared way too soon so I guess I'll have to look into that. I might also see about replacing UPS with UPSMON. Thanks for the feedback :) btw im probably gonna put this in the mission. coming up - air drops ;)

This might be relevant. I did this for my sandbox. You use a weapon as input and it extracts a magazine for each muzzle. Inherited muzzles as well. _weapon = _this select 0; _magazines = []; _muzzles = getArray(configfile >> "cfgWeapons" >> _weapon >> "muzzles"); if ("this" in _muzzles) then { _muzzles = _muzzles - ["this"]; _magazines = _magazines + [(getArray(configfile >> "cfgWeapons" >> _weapon >> "magazines")) select 0]; }; { _m = [(getArray(configfile >> "cfgWeapons" >> _weapon >> _x >> "magazines")) select 0]; _magazines = _magazines - _m; _magazines = _magazines + _m; }forEach _muzzles; _magazines Hope this helps :) Cheers -dmos

Haha amen :D

That's strange, it should work just fine. I made it so that the person you teamswitch to would always be the leader; it's a feature not a mistake just to be clear :). ACE shouldn't have anything to do with it, I use ACE all the time. What's your OA version? Do you think something in your installation might be outdated? Last time it worked fine for me, but I'm gonna go check again. If it doesn't work I'll report back, otherwise it might be your game :/ ---------- Post added at 06:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:35 AM ---------- I'm happy you got all that work done. Recommend you use ACE, ACEX and ACEX-RU. It will improve your gameplay considerably! It will give you a lot of improvements out of the box, and if you use it with my sandbox it's gonna unlock some (soon more) features as well. Also you don't have configure ACE just make sure you have the right one and that's it, so don't worry about it taking up your time.

oh crap you're right, i didn't put in an explanation :) I'm updating the first post now

UPDATE 6 OUT! Download from first post or here. Many new things. Updated first post info so check that (features and changelog). Things that will be implemented very soon: air dropped supplies and probably Special Forces units posing as elite groups. Kyle, I added support for RH weapon mods as requested - thanks for the idea! Also I highly recommend playing with ACE-X_RU, because then, along side Takistani Army and Militia you'll have Russian Desert infantry (in seperate groups). Weapon caches' content has changed ALOT. Especially if you're using ACE and/or RH mods. Also if you're using any of the RH mods, you will only get those as your starting weapons ;) BTW, following the Jedra's suggestion I improved some mechanisms, now the mission should run faster on your cpus. Cheers -dmos

Worked out an air drop script for equipment and vehicles and how to check for specific custom content. Now in progress of revamping the mission to automatically include some of the following mods if you're using them (if not you will still be able to play out of the box): RH weapon mods (Kyle's suggestion, thanks again), ACE, new infantry like Russian Desert units (that probably doesnt make much sense but still they sound like an attractive addition), and more. Working on Also infantry groups won't be mixed anymore – all will be from the same faction. Factions: BAF, FR, DE, PMC (not sure PMC is a good idea), Taki Militia (hostile to blufor), Taki Army, already mentioned RU army. Special Forces will also spawn in separate groups, forming elite squads. SF groups will be relatively rare and they will generally paradrop in. Brace yourselves, next update will be a big one. Waiting for suggestion concerning custom weapons, units and maybe vehicles. Cheers -dmos

Thanks alot guys. Jedra, I'm looking forward to your mod, good luck with that! I worked out how I'm gonna do my checks, your examples were very helpful btw: That's to check if the RH's HK416 mod is installed: RH_HK416 = isClass (configFile >> "CfgWeapons" >> "RH_hk416"); RH_hk416 is the parent class for the rest of the classes added by the mod. Maybe there's a better way to find the parent class but I found it using inheritsFrom. Then just use RH_HK416 as conditional: if (RH_hk416) then {};

How to get a script to dig through the installed mods and extract custom units and weapons? Or check whether specific custom content is installed? I'm looking to make my sandbox (Deep Sand) more dynamic and involve custom content, but at the same time be compatible with vanilla. Thanks -dmos

I started a topic in the editing section to get an insight on how to have a script use custom content automatically. I'd appreciate some help, thanks -dmos

Kyle, thanks alot for your feedback ;) I really appreciate it. Your argument on proactive vs reactive really got me thinking, but I guess I disagree with a couple of your points or premises. First off I completely agree that proactive is the way to go when we're talking about education. It helps establish a stress free environment and leads to high performance. However, you did not acknowledge or didnt stress the fact that the proactive approach is very artificial in the sense that it side steps the way people usually approach/accept/deal with failure. Excuse the drama but I think that unless I'm trying to simulate a class room I should avoid it. I'm not interested in encouraging high performance. In fact performance doesn't matter to me at all. And neither do I want to teach or encourage something. What I am interested in is inducing a sense of fragility, danger, importance of decisions and their irreversibility. Above all fragility. And since I'm not interested about performance or education/teaching, I think "reactive response" is exactly the way to go. I think it's great in creating a hostile environment, which again is exactly what I want. I hope this shines some light on my goals. Concerning your CAS suggestion mine is very much in that direction ;) though higher up my priorities is Air Drops and Elite Paratroopers. Also thanks for suggesting those weapons ;) I just have to figure out how to make the mission tell whether you have specific mods running or not. I'm reinventing the wheel here :) Also M32 can be a good tactical asset, but it's way too easy to go rambo on AI's ass with it so I'll try to steer clear of it :) Liked your armed fortifications idea too :) but that might be hard, because orientation and placement would be very important so the randomization would be very dificult as well. Thanks again for your suggestions, Kyle! Take care Cheers -dmos ---------- Post added at 06:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:53 PM ---------- This might sound weird, but I find that introductions are bad for immersion. The stashes just like any other element in Deep Sand aren't goals. In fact even to survive isn't a goal. I can't make a player care about surviving and trying to force it through goals just makes it worse. This missions rather delivers a simulation which should evoke a sense of realism which in turn the urge to survive. A list of goals and rules, I find, is bad for that. However maybe it's a good idea to stress in the first post that in this mission you don't have a mission. I might just want to phrase it better. Anyway thanks for your suggestion Cheers -dmos

Update 5 just uploaded. Download from first post. Improved overall dynamism. Stashes more unique. Your main weapon is one of two versions of Mk16 (I'm not randomizing your starting weapon on purpose so that you wouldn't be too effective at the distance at the start or after respawning; urges you to search for another weapon). Improved the random weather, time mechanism -- should yield more pleasant results. Increased stashes number to 27 including the 2 marked by radars. Increased stashes number because as it seems they're not that easy to find Hope you enjoy it -dmos