Hulahuga

Aight, PVP spawn/respawn seems to be working perfectly. Also did a minor tweak to correct the ammo type for the extremely hard to find police shield. I do however need your help now, and will be releasing a PVP testbuild, to test it out, as I need more players in on the server to properly test out the new mechanics (join in progress as Spetsnaz among them) =). If you are willing and able give me a shout! Also, don't fear, I will retain co-op only as an option ;). Edit: PVP-Testbuild has been uploaded now as a separate mission file download. Edit 2: Changelog for the testbuild: PVP mode (still alpha)! (To make things even more difficult, an optionable Spetsnaz player team has been added, with the goal of hunting down the escapees). Setting the viewdistance is now properly applied and confirmed working. Fast ropes should now be working properly. A lot of new vehicles, coupled with balanced vehicle spawns throughout the map. Some new enemy types, as well as proper balancing. Giant spreadsheet for the units and vehicles added to the dev-dashboard, enabling a lot faster changes and better balancing. M9 mags now spawn with the very hard to find police shield instead of Makarov. To do/In progress: Win/lose condition for the PVP (works for co-op though). Briefing for the Spetsnaz team. Starting ammo depot, courtesy of the Chedaki, for the Spetsnaz. Variation of the starting vehicles for the Spetsnaz. Location reports of the fugitives (either fading markers or radio messages).

Right now, as IRL, you can't ;). I'm looking into doing a custom respawn mechanic for SP as discussed previously in this thread :) Also, quick update: All vehicle, static weaponry and infantry spawns have been given an overhaul to balance the difficulty levels properly, as well as make a bit more sense considering real life army structure and whatnot. Some new vehicles (about 6), infantry and static weaponry are also included. Please note that this is still work in progress, and minor things will probably change: https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/809/nlfk.jpg https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/833/v1u4.jpg https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/853/6uxw.jpg https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/703/ev0r.jpg

Also, this: --->

YES! You are right on the money there ;). If you read the list of planned features you'll see a number of things that will contribute to that :). It is also the aim of almost everything I will implement now to bring about new gameplay possibilities, and having a reason for staying in Chernarus is probably the best way to go for it =) (not saying you can't escape anymore, it will simply be what you are free to do if you so please).

You should look into playing on recruit - found in the server settings - as that is what sets things like extended armor and whatnot (the specifics can be found under game settings, difficulty in the main menu). I am sure the AI settings have an effect though, because they tend to act a bit retarded at times if you play on difficulties lower than normal :). I think you might actually be able to play with AI if you tweak the mission file or set it up in the host menu (not sure if it exits).

Not yet, but it is coming out tonight most probably ;) Note: Added some new stuff just there Edit: and there. ---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:17 ---------- It is now! Edit: Mini quickfix: some of the intro texts tweaked.

---Update 0.45 Released--- Please feel free to come with feedback! Implemented and verified changes Massive rework of the dashboard of the mod: everything is now properly sorted, the spawn chances, number of weapons and magazines dropped homogenized and very much reworked, new statistical analysis of the probable number of unique drops per depot per category (see: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?155860-Escape-From-Chernarus-HulaZone&p=2425672&viewfull=1#post2425672). Some code reorganization, following the rework of the dashboard. Lower spawn chance per item overall to account for all the new weapons, albeit a slightly higher drop chance for some place-able heavy weapons. Boats. New airplanes (minijets and Cessnas) and different kinds of gliders spawning on the airfields and countryside. New fixed defenses on the northwest airfield, including a number of AA defenses, as well as a parked tank. New/edited/removed journal entries; should now prove for a bit more entertaining, as well as efficient read plus some other minor text tweaks. New guard type (introducing a new weapon for the guards, which should be able to diversify the early gameplay quite a lot), as well as some new enemy types. Two new roadblock vehicles (including one that is quite deadly ;)). Some new ambient vehicles. The roaming ATV with the US soldier should now be removed. New build is now being uploaded to the hosting, and news-messages plastered :P

So I was thinking I could share a bit of my workflow with you guys today. I give you, ---The BI-dashboard for Escape From Chernarus - HulaZone--- I've been working for the most part in this now pretty gigantic excel document for the most part when adding new items (and now balancing them, their drop chances and magazine amounts). This might seem like a pain at first, and it to some extent is, but what it enables me is to quickly scan off and change a huge number of values, and automatically get a complete code string that I can add into the class list for the mod, as well as get an overview of the direct effects for the end users. The following is the main page, which feeds into the others. Among other things it gives me a better overview of the spawn chances, and if you take a look at P(X) you might have noticed that that is the chance of an item appearing at least once within 4 ammo depots, as well as its specified probability. As you could see in the above picture the P(X) values are generally quite high, and due to the large amount of new weapons I've added (the number of weapons, backpacks and equipment - excluding grenades, regular binoculars, mines, charges and navigational equipment - that can spawn at the ammo depots now total 180) I've noticed you can sometimes receive an overwhelming amount of different TYPES of items, rather than their individual amounts. This has led me to do a statistical analysis (as I have perfect data) where I can view the percentage chance of the count of unique drops per category per ammo depot. As you see these are all following normal distributions, although not a perfect bell shape, as the probabilities range from 40-1 % per item. http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/1747/28uo.jpg (123 kB) To accomplish this I originally sought to go with not only perfect data, but also perfect calculation to retrieve the exact figures as a bit of a mathematical and statistical experiment (I study business and economics, so that's kind of why :P). It turns out though that as you increase the number of unique entities, as well as especially increasing the number of allowed probabilities (and I wanted my sought after model to allow for as many probabilities as there are entities) this grew increasingly complex. When you only have one probability, but up to a near infinite number of entities you can go for a binomial distribution to calculate it (which is an extension of combinatorics), and I could then have used a binomial distribution for each probability class. This however means that I cant get a grand total of the actual ammo depot, but only for each class (which is fine for some purposes, and I might actually use it soon, but not for this). So I looked at combinatorics itself and quickly realized that this would grow overly difficult to accomplish, with papers written on a high level in the Academia about it (search for multinomial distributions, or look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinomial_distribution). This of course frustrated me a bit as I want a clean way to calculate it, however after talking to a friend of mine who masters in AI we both agreed that for the ends of this task it would just save me a great deal of trouble to go for a bit more a brute force and statistical method (simulation model) rather than calculating probabilities fully (combinatorics). This, now that I actually fully read the wikipedia page ended up with being more or less what the talk about under "To simulate a multinomial distribution", although we never viewed that beforehand. Here is a snapshot of one of the random number generators. As you see I've made a list that automatically retrieves the latest version of the probabilities. It then transposes the formula, without distorting the references (which was a bit of a pain, but I found a nice guide online). A random number generator giving integers between 0 and 99 is then setup, going the same number of columns as the entities, and then repeated to slightly over 10 000 rows to give a lower statistical error due to sampling issues. A IF code then checks the randomly generated number (which I can iterate freely) to the probability (just like the mission code) and gives a 1 for spawn, and a 0 for no spawn. A SUM is then made of each row for the true/false values to count the number of spawned items in the ammo depot for that sample. This is then fed into the pivot table shown in the previous image where I can get some nice numbers, and graphs, of the probabilities for the number of unique spawned items for each category in the ammo depot. As you see the expected value for the number of special weapons is quite high right now, which I will change before the next update is out to make it a bit more authentic, and difficult for the players. The same probably has to be done to the basic weapons and only a tiny bit to the launchers (there are doubles there). Thus I am a bit of a turning point if I will actually continue with spawning everything more or less random like this, only with different probabilities, or if I instead should go for a bit more realistic (though maybe a bit boring) version where a number weapon categories are chosen instead by random, where you are certain of a fair number of weapons spawning, but all from the same weapon family (like AKs). This would be a viable solution with the high number of scoped versions and whatnot (e.g. AK-family would then include have a first check for AK-47/AK-74/SA-58, a second for AEK/AK-107/AN-94/AK-12 and Vityaz/Magpul or something, and then do checks for scoped versions or not, here with another set of probabilities to make each category of depot slightly different). This is however still very much in the air, and I will definitely not implement weapon families until after this balanced update. I would however very much like to hear your feedback. If you also have any feedback on the classification of weapons, or their relative chance of appearance, that would be great =) ---------- Post added at 12:56 ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 ----------

---Update 0.41--- Added/Fixed All form of backpacks have been properly added and are verified functioning in-game (this includes the UAV, Heavy weapons, backpacks and ammo packs). Note: This was a bit tricky as ArmA scripts make a division between equipment/weapons and backpack items, and I thus had to manipulate the scripts a bit to actually spawn them. I did however not want to make it all messy with backpacks auto-spawning with ammo next to them (as that is the way the original arrays were constructed), and thus had to create a new array for backpacks spawning for each of the three relevant depot types, that also had to be integrated into their core-script to function properly to avoid issues with privately set variables and whatnot. This will make adding any new item, now including backpacks, to the game a piece of cake from now on as I use Squint in conjunction with Excel and a bit of .VBA code to automate hellish amounts of tedious copy pasting (I did this for the first build, and it just took forever, so when I added the addonpackage I really wanted to avoid a similar situation and thus had a go at VBA). The Excel list also means that I can tweak any lines of code for the weapon lists without fearing botching it, and I can also make massive changes in a matter of seconds, as well as getting a much better overview for balancing (which needs a bit of work, and that you can expect changes to come 0.5).

Okay, so we just finished a test run on a custom test build of mine where I set the equipment and backpacks to 100% spawn chance and for some reason no backpack items spawn, but the new binoculars do. This must mean that everything that goes under the category of backpacks in the classes (i.e. both backpacks and the drone, which is in backpack form) need another call trigger to spawn properly. If anyone has any tips I appreciate it, but I'll look into it myself asap :). Btw, I'm going on a brief holiday to Gotland now for a couple of days, so I'll be able to answer stuff and research the code, but I won't be able to add stuff and test it in the actual mission other than tweaking and balancing values...

That's really weird. You only need CBA and the mod-package =) You might however receive complaints about .cfg stuff, but that is not due to an error on my end but rather something inherent both to arma 2 (backpacks), and one of the addons that are in use. It won't affect your gameplay however the slightest afaik.

Kommiekat - It is supposed to be dependent lol :P. If it weren't dependent, you would end up in a game-world that tries to spawn a ton of new cool features, but simply doesn't find them on your harddrive... Just download the mod-package with a browser that isn't borked, just like the other guy did (page 3) :)

Ah, ok, good to hear! Deleting the dropbox link then :)

What? Didn't you just say you were able to play it and had everything lol? Whenever I try it though I have like 8 mb/s, no interruptions ever... Sure your ISP isn't the one that is crapping? XD Might be that your dl-location has run out of space too. Re-uploading it to dropbox anyhow so you can get a link in either case to compare it to. (I'll make a post about it here when it is done)

Haha, that is some darn good work ;). Well there is a chance that no backpacks or drone will spawn, but that chance should be quite slim statistically speaking. Hmm, I'll look into it in a testbuild of mine (setting their spawn rate to 100%) to see if it is the actual spawning that is wrong, or if you are simply extremely unlucky :P. Any other issues or feedback that you have btw?

Howdy! Thanks for playing :). First off what version have you been playing, and how many ammo depots have you raided? Worth noting is that the chances of finding the best backpacks are pretty slim (I might up it though). I'll look into this though for sure!

Haha, awesome man :). It should read the .pbos as well and take a look at the mission.sqm to see what is listed there too :) Well I added it as close to the mod line as possible in the dependency list, but the file name and the addonname in the .cfg file are all to often different, resulting in a bit of a naming mismatch at times :P. I did add what you search for on armaholic anyhow to the names where you have any major differences.

Good to hear! =) ---------- Post added at 07:07 ---------- Previous post was at 06:46 ---------- ---Update 0.4--- Added Removed the starting backpacks of all players. Fixed the time speedup; the host can now set the length of the day/night cycle. New longer enemy spawn distance options. Host options for setting view distance. Switched to a date with full moon. This also means that as time progresses (especially if you are playing with a time speed up), and you play for a number of days, the nights will grow darker, as you also improve and find new equipment. Due to your high-profile capture and, soon to be, daring escape the Russians have taken an interest and sent a Spetsnaz company to the area to help the Chedaki hunt you down. A new guard type at the prison. ALICE Pack re-added to loot list. To be added - Next Update "Micro-" and "ultralight" gliders added to some locations on the map (including grenade drops on inattentive enemies). BWP - Microjet. GNT - Cessnas, including a seaplane version. Camps. Fixed garrisons at the airfields. To be looked into - Probably for a future update Custom unit classes. For players to be able to choose another set of outfits, for enemies to be able to set their equipment. Radio transmissions from the guerrilla leading the players to the location of some of their camps in the wilderness. This could be dependent on players' scores to simulate a Quid Pro Qou situation where the players have incentive to stick around Chernarus for a while, whilst also committing themselves to more dangerous escapades. The score in this situation would also be extra interesting as it gives negative score for killing civilians. Civilian interaction to avoid unnecessary civilian deaths.

Hi there, Pretty nice script man, good to see it works with JIP as well. I have some issues with it though as it still jerks quite a bit as it changes the time in the world (both setdate and skiptime seem to do it for me). Have you considered making a version where you skiptime basically every other second or something? Edit: Fixed the stupid issue I had, but the statement above still stands true :)

Hi there, thanks for playing! Aight so first off the bat, what version are you running, how many were you playing with, what arma version are you running, did you have any other mods enabled when you saved the game? Some general tips though in regards to the saving and loading (which me and some pals of mine did with the latest version yesterday a ton of times without error) to avoid any errors: Make sure you load the game again with the exact same mod-folders enabled as when you saved the game. Check what version of the game you are running and if you updated it in between. Load the game with the same players/characters as when you saved. Most importantly, wait a while. I thought I was stuck, but when I load at least I come to a black screen getting stuck with the loading bar at maximum, wait there for a little while, then comes another load screen (which in my case shows the JSRS backdrop), and then it says loading data or receiving in white text on a black background without any load bars, and then you get in (this took us max 1 min). If it still doesn't work you can always try to "revert" back to an older save file or something, but this works for us at least. If this still doesn't work out for you I would love to hear more about it so that I know what to fix (if possible, a lot of the issues are often dependent on the engine and gameworld itself).

Thanks, also nice job with the new updates, though I must say I prefer the black look to that green one. If you want to make it green I think you should work on making it either look more worn, or add a bit of camo to it :) I'll add everything once the KN is ready then :)

---Update 0.33!--- All new backpacks (25 of them), place-able heavy weapons, rpg and metis ammo-backpack for the loaders, 2 different rangefinders RAVEN UAV-drone New outfits (as the ArmA 2 models can't use backpacks - these are still not the final models though as I have found some really cool ones among the OA units which I think you will enjoy, but as they are different "sides" the revive script starts acting up, any help would be appreciated) Longer hijacking and transmission countdown to make it a bit more realistic (the "spotter" can crack it faster than the others). PS: You can now put any queries you have on Dev-Heaven if you want to, and it might also be a good way to track new updates and whatnot.

That's why you now have a save function ;). Though a little word of warning: it only seems to store the state of the world and the host, the other players will spawn without equipment for some reason (someone pls confirm), so my tip when you want to save is to get a car or something which your teammates can put their gear inside :)

---Update 0.3--- 88 new weapons have been added to the game, as well as some new vehicles, stationary weapons and one or two new enemies! @tortuosit - I've also tried out dying in SP, and as it is right now you simply get the revive cam for a second and then you die and loose the mission :), but I'll look into auto revives as said before!

Hey there, pretty darn cool weapons guys :). I get an error about the .cfg though for the VityazKN (wooden version), saying no entry, and as I look at it with Squint I can't seem to find any mention of it either except for in the vehicles... Any advice? Also can't seem to find the RPG you are mentioning anywhere in the files nor in the readme from the download.