doc. caliban

I'd be happy to do the mask myself ... as a "function over fashion" guy, it wouldn't bother me at all that the model doesn't match. Do you happen to know: 1. Where the mask file is? 2. Where I can get the most current Photoshop plugin for the image format? Thanks! - Doc

Ah, they must have been spawned by AC; I was able to get to them after reloading the save, so that's ok. I've been less aggressive about taking out patrols for the sake of trying to gather intel. It's probably my luck, but I've been finding that locating anyone that can be searched for intel is rare, and of those that can, actually finding intel is extremely rare. Both used to seem more common before 1.78. It does tend to make me less inclined to engage a groups as the odds of there being any reward seems very low. Not saying this is bad, it just seems different, and different enough to change how I play a bit. As for the camp lights, I know that I would be happy without them. At night I am in NV anyway, and it makes me feel very exposed and vulnerable to have the light on all of the time. Off to bed! - Doc Off topic: Does anyone know of a sound mod that reduces the footfall / breathing sounds volume? I keep the sound up with my 5.1 headphones so I can hear more of the ambient noises and approaching vehicles, but the sound of my stomping feet and loud breathing is getting on my nerves. I play 1st-person, but the 3rd-person volume level for those sounds is much better IMO. I've done a lot of running around in the woods in my day, and I'm pretty sure the game sounds for that stuff is too loud.

I'm several hours into 1.78 with AC (Med). I still think the vehicle patrols are an awesome factor that keeps you on your toes. I just left my backpack with my hidden vehicle just outside of a hideout and hoofed it about 350m to a hill top that gives me a good view of the next church I'm going to check. I brought a compact launcher and no spare rockets because I was not going far, and I'd not seen a vehicle anywhere in the area for almost an hour. Not even a minute after I saw my first 3-man patrol to the south, I started hearing a vehicle behind me to the north. Took it out as it crested the hill about 100m north of me. Nice. Speaking of vehicle patrols, I have a feeling that the two SAD choppers are being taken out by AC early in the mission. I watched one fly around a battle very early into the mission, then fly away when it was done. It's hours and hours later and I've never seen or heard another one, and I've been in some big shootouts and taken out a lot of vehicles. I have an AA launcher in my vehicle, but I'm pretty sure I won't need (get) to use it. Is there a way to respawn the SAD choppers if they are destroyed / disabled by anyone other than the player? Ah, also something I've been waning to ask since I played the first time back around 1.12 ... would it be possible to turn off the lamps at hideouts the same way you can douse the fire? I would really like that a lot. One last thing: I took out an 8-man patrol and all the bodies disappeared while I was well within 2km of them. I loaded the previous save and they were back again. (I had not run the gravedigger script manually.) Any thoughts on what might cause that? I forget which caching I am using, but I do know that AC bodies are deleted automatically, and I manually do my kills. - Doc

I'm constantly impressed with you working to accommodate our feature requests. Absolutely outstanding. Thank you! - Doc

Agreed! Well done to you guys for working together to figure this out. Thanks! - Doc

SO looking forward to this. Please publish when it's ready! I agree that too much is better than not enough, because not enough in this case is ridiculously not enough. -Doc

WOW! 20 min in my first mission with AC enabled (Medium). As you've said, it's a totally different game! I've basically just had to hunker down and watch the action. - Doc ---------- Post added at 19:55 ---------- Previous post was at 19:46 ---------- I just found that I can no longer attach a suppressor to the MX LSW, so there is at least that degradation in realism with the update. (I would rather not have a conversation about what is realistic with suppressors because I have a fair amount of real world experience with them.) IMO, games mess with weapon stats when suppressors are involved as a way to "balance" weapons, especially for multiplayer. SCREW THAT. In a game like ARMA III, they should just stick with the facts. On the plus side, the game seems to load faster, as does the editor. Hopefully that indicates some overall performance improvements. -Doc

Well, I'm very lucky that I didn't download 1.78 and start a new mission last night. I'm sitting here looking at my Steam settings for Arma III, and they say, "Do not automatically update this game: Content for this game will not be automatically acquired." However, it is currently downloading and applying an update automatically. Sometimes Steam feels like the new EA. Starting the mission once it's done doing what it claims it will not do. LIES - Doc EDIT: It will be worth it if they fixed that annoying wounded sound it makes when you're tired! EDIT2: Nnnnnope!

Excellent! I have never actually played through the mission with Ambient Combat, Civilians, or Artillery ... I'm looking forward to trying that out. I like that the SAD is now up to 12Km ... the island is small, so it makes sense that such an air response would simply go wherever on the island it's needed. I have not been having any performance issues, so have always used the default caching option. Do you recommend I try a different one, or just keep going with the default? - Doc

That's cool ... Rydygier has been awesome about accommodating as many things as he can for us. The game itself only allows for so many options to be programed in and he's hit that limit already. Don't stop making requests and suggestions though, because he's great about doing what he can for us! Welcome to the mission, by the way! - Doc ---------- Post added at 18:37 ---------- Previous post was at 18:30 ---------- I totally understand. Really. Try as I might, I know it's very tempting to keep saving all the time ... I do it myself. When I play a game that does not allow it, it's much more stressful and realistic from that standpoint. And as you say, it's all personal preference. The only issue here is the game limitation of how many startup options he can program into the mission. Since not everyone wants a certain feature, he's been setting them up as options that can be chosen on personal preference at the start of the mission, allowing us to customize the mission as we see fit. Unfortunately he maxed out what the programming limitations of the game have a week ago, so the only way he'd be able to implement a new feature, such as periodic auto-saves, would be to make it a global thing that happens to everyone. So it's not that he disagrees with your idea, he's just out of ways to accommodate things like that. I'm eagerly awaiting the next version of the mission so I can start again! Best, - Doc EDIT: Or forgetting to manually save often enough! ---------- Post added at 18:46 ---------- Previous post was at 18:37 ---------- And this is one of the big reasons why Rydygier is so awesome ... he has been very generous with us like this. This is great! - Doc EDIT AGAN: AND I'm excited to start a new mission because starting tomorrow I am off for 5 days! Lots of time to play.

I have to say that I agree with this entirely. Having auto saves just to counter a habit of manually saving too often or not often enough would be a bit much in my opinion. Self discipline! - Doc

There's the answer... disable unlimited saves in settings, and only use the auto-saves at the churches. The stress is getting to each church in tact to get the save. - Doc

I know that struggle ... as an old school PC gamer, I hate "checkpoint" saves ala console games, but have to discipline myself to not manually save so often that it takes part of the anxiety / challenge away. I don't think I'd care for a timed auto-save though ... too much chance for a disastrous save point! -Doc

I do have -noLogs. Oh well. After restarting the whole game and loading the save game, it behaved normally. Probably that tip of saving the game, restarting, and loading it to improve FPS. I have never had to do that, but it apparently worked for me here. -Doc

Sure, how do I gather that info? PC is good ... usually getting between 40-70 FPS throughout the mission with the same mods. Oh, and I had civilian presence maxed out but left at 400m radius. -Doc Also, I didn't try a second time ... I can do that too and see if it's fine. Update: I just loaded the same saved game, it was getting under 10 FPS, and then after about 30 seconds it jumped to 60 FPS. Last night when I started the mission, it was still under 10 FPS after a few minutes. Last night I tried saving and reloading the game but that did not help. I did NOT try saving, exiting the mission, then reloading it however. Loading the game from scratch today may be what made the difference.

Looking forward to the next version. I tried 1.76 with ambient combat and artillery on but my frame rate was under 10 FPS. I'm thinking it was just a fluke, and I was just messing around so it wasn't a big deal. I'm going to have another go at it with the new version though! -Doc

I just finished a go with 1.76 and I very much enjoyed the vehicle patrols and their coming to look for me ... very exciting aspect! Thank you for considering and trying out the option of disabling ADM communications ... I'm looking forward to trying that out. I will probably wait a few days before starting another mission but will keep an eye on the thread. Thanks for all your work. - Doc

Ah, I see. I've been ctrl+shift clicking for those. I figure if you have a GPS, it makes sense to be able to do that. (But not if you only have a paper map, or nothing at all.) As for the ADM Comms; if the radio itself is only used as an interface for executing mission functions, maybe they could be treated similarly to phone calls instead ... for instance, that drop-down option could have the options: - Phone calls and ADM - Phone calls only - ADM only - None That is to say, since the radio isn't actually used for communications, then it wouldn't make sense to lose the mission functionality by having to remove the radio in order to eliminate the ADM messages. Just a thought. Thanks! -Doc

Thanks! I just realized something ... if I get rid of my radio, will I stop receiving black market intel offers about vehicles and hostile activity? I've decided to ignore all of those and rely only on what I can find myself and would love to disable those messages. Would dumping the radio do that? Also, I had to admit that I don't know what the "shift-click" feature is. :-) - Doc

Is there a definitive list of what Hardcore Mode includes? I don't want to start the game over to see the tool tips. :-) -Doc

My understanding then is that my own kills will only vanish after 30 minutes of being farther than 2.5KM from my location. Is that correct? I am not playing with AC this time around, and have the body marker set to Own Kills. What happens if I come back within 2.5KM of a body before the 30 minutes has passed? Does it reset the timer? I think 2.5KM is a fair distance, and now that I know about it, I can plan appropriately. Thank you. -Doc

I am finding that I am losing chances to search bodies for intel or gather gear because they vanish from the map before I get to them. For instance it may not be the best plan to go directly to a checkpoint that I just took down from 1.5KM away, and I spend some time clearing out a nearby area to be safe. Then I find the bodies at the checkpoint are just gone. If nothing else, could the distance / time factor be increased? Thanks for all the work! -Doc EDIT: BTW, I love that nearby vehicles will come investigate ... I've had to snap-shoot three now with the rocket launcher; one of which was a very close range. Great feature!

I had a funny thing happen with that mod once: I'd been playing with fly-bys enabled, then disabled them mid-mission. From there on out, every time I'd load a saved game I'd hear a big explosion not too far away after a few moments. I also noticed a lot of things burning. I don't know how it was happening, but it turns out that there were planes and helicopters crashed all over the place, and more and more would keep showing up. It was like they were spawning at altitude but not flying, and just fell straight to the ground. Just speculation though because all I ever saw were the wrecks themselves all over the map. I've not seen anything like that with any other play-throughs though. -Doc

Reinstalled ARMA, and that seems to have fixed my hitchhiking problem. Off I go! -Doc

Had a second and tried 1.71 (apparently deleted 1.74) and HH works. (with the same mods enabled) More testing later. Thanks for the replies! -Doc ---------- Post added at 22:32 ---------- Previous post was at 22:07 ---------- Took all the mods out: Same issue. I'll try again later.