BDC

Yeah, the more I look at this the more I think I could do three different mission versions: Straight COOP (blufor/civilians), Team COOP (blufor vs. opfor groups), and straight PVP with no player groups, ala DayZ, Exile mod, etc. I already have all of the guts written on an Altis mission with something like 130 markers for each city, town, etc on the map that could be used to (possibly) spawn in a random number of raiders/bandits as well as their vehicles. I bet with some work, it would work just fine. Hmmm. B

Haleks, been checking this out after making a "plain jane ravage" mission in the Editor. After looking at this MP version more closely, I think I might be able to make this work on a dedicated server as a downloadable mission. I already have the framework built for vehicle and character persistence as well as the ability to support multiple headless clients on a dedicated environment with configurable modules, meaning I could write one module like zombie spawning and make it sit on one headless client while another one does loot spawning for players as well as bandit AI, that kind of thing. If you're interested, let me know. B

By the way, very impressed with and excited about the progress! B

If you're working on setting it up to run on a Dedicated Server Haleks, I can help you with load distribution. As far as I can see here, you're walking down the exact same path that Rocket did with DayZ several years ago. The next step, once you get the dedicated part going, is to write the zombie and loot spawner modules to work with headless clients. Since the dedicated server process in Arma 3 only takes up so much ram (just under 2Gb) and only utilizes so much CPU (on my box, about 18%), you can use multiple headless clients, configured with unlimited bandwidth, on the same machine to run some of your zed and loot spawn stuff. It's a way of being able to distribute that load and use more CPU power. B

You know I'm always available. And you can reach me anytime either here or on Steam with ID ^bdc. B

Sounds good, Haleks.

Loot spawn in Chernarus can be made to work by grabbing the various buildings' loot spawn positions from the Arma 2 DayZ mod code. Real easy. B

That's a good idea. Adding another antagonist would help re-balance things back out a bit. B

In multiplayer, those triggers will have to be converted from having been done on the map to being written in script form, if they're not already, and run on the host machine only. B

In speaking of NPC's, how exactly are you spawning the random bandit/raider AI? Are they marker-based, meaning there's a static amount that pops with signature areas like military bases, towns, that sort of thing? Or is it entirely random? B

My buddy and I Hardpipe tried out the DoctorX multiplayer mission yesterday. Not sure if you're familiar with it or not, but it uses your Ravage mod as the backdrop. I hosted it on my gamer machine (not on a server) and all of the Ravage-based functions worked properly. I had zombie sounds, the colour filter, weather, all that sort of thing. But my buddy didn't. He had regular Arma clouds and colours, no zombie sounds, and whenever he looked into a spawned loot container, there was nothing in it. He also had trouble getting in vehicles as he would be kicked out. It's almost as if the actual Ravage-side scripts didn't load, although he could see the zombies and the raiders. And on the setVariable thing - That's how you do it for anything that needs to go multiplayer. I don't think it operates like a publicVariable EH but it is JIP-compatible and does hit all clients. It works just fine. Adding a bit to this - In CO18 Resistance Plus, I have some vehicles that are locked in an area-of-engagement marker area that remain locked until the marker is cleared of bad guys. Once that happens, I have a routine that will unlock them. Part of that is keeping the inventory locked as well. I use the InventoryOpened EH tied to each player and it's triggered every time that player attempts to get inventory opened, like you're already familiar with. On the locked vehicles, when the server is loaded and propagating those vehicles on the map, I execute this: _this setVariable ["InvLocked",true,true]; If a player logs in after the server has already been going and attempts to go to that vehicle and get into its inventory, he can't. In the InventoryOpened EH code, it grabs the variable from the vehicle (_InvLocked = _this getVariable ["InvLocked",false];) and is returned false on it. If it's already unlocked by the time he logs in, he'll get true back and can open it. So it's JIP-compatible and doesn't use EH's. It's inherent, apparently. B

^ Exactly, Haleks. I would recommend keeping it as vanilla as possible for all of your testing and re-work. It shouldn't be that big of a deal to modify to make for multiplayer (for at least a listen server for the time being). The things I think you'd need to modify primarily are the createAgent and createVehicle spawn routines used for spawning zed and loot containers, respectively. The spawn function(s) themselves can remain on the clients, as it already is, but perhaps mark a building when it's already had a function run thru-it to keep other clients from attempting to have the function run in the same building, preventing duplication of loot containers and zed. There's nothing wrong in having one client's box spawning, controlling, and owning (locality) all the zed in, say, a village, when his client-side function runs first to spawn. Since they are agents, it shouldn't lag him down really since (I suspect) no inherent Arma 3 behaviour scripts are running (disable "FSM" I am gathering you use). Same goes for the bandit/raider AI as well. Now when you get ready to try dedicated server MP using a headless client to spawn all the agents, loot, and raiders, let me know and I'll be ready to lend a hand. B

There's also no zombie sounds on the connected clients (as opposed to host) and no colour filters. You're right on the loot spawn thing inside the container. I suspect you've written it as part of an InventoryOpened EH when a player opens the inventory of a spawned-in container as a way to reduce the "hitchy" lag thing but I don't think it'll be a problem if you place the items in the container during the createVehicle process. The real lag comes from the creation of the container (vehicle) rather than the placing of the items in it. In MP, the thing to take into account, is the use of a 3rd variable when doing setVariable commands: _x setVariable ["MyVariable",true]; If you were to add this: x_ setVariable ["MyVariable",true,true]; -- the 3rd variable being "TRUE", that is made for all clients. Same with using false at the end. It moves it from a local variable to a globally-recognized one and is even JIP (join in progress). B

I suspect to do a map port of this mod there would need to be some starting spawn points coded in as well as the relative positions for loot and zed spawn in the non-Arma 3 buildings. But, Chernarus does sound like a cool idea. Brings back the old school DayZ feeling of running thru Cherno with your hair on fire while being chased. B

Haleks, you could use a Killed EH on the zombie agent to possibly trigger the spawn of a basic item (even trash loot like cans) on the body at a very low drop date. It might be a little clunky but it would work. Good changes coming 1.35! I still think you should very slightly up the drop rate of canned food, though. Merry New Year, B

It happened in the Orca as well earlier. I guess I'll just live with it! Risk vs reward I suppose, right? B

In regular Arma missions, yes, while shooting gobs of .50 out of a technical or an MRAP, but it was difficult to do.

Merry Christmas by the way!

Howdy Haleks, been playing again for several hours today. Here's my list of complaints, questions, and ideas: 1) Like I've said before, the canned food drop rate is *too damn low*. It needs to be bumped up a bit. Not a bunch, but a little -- I get more ammo drops than I do canned food in house loot spawn and that doesn't make sense. 2) I died at 10% nutrition. If this works on a 0-100 scale, then it ought to be that you die at 0% and not 10. 10 took me by surprise and led me to believe that I had more time to try and (never) find a can of food. 3) Slightly increase the canned food/powdered milk/etc drops on the raiders. I've killed a ton and barely gotten any. Since it's a challenge to kill them (sometimes they spawn in a group of 5), and there's the possibility of dying easily against them, then the reward in this regard needs to be greater in my opinion. 4) Cooked meat needs to yield *AT LEAST* 30% nutrition if not 50. It takes finding matches, then kindling item for a fire, and then finding a critter, killing it (which means having to find a gutting knife) to yield JUST 15 health. It's ridiculously low given the work that the player has to go through to get it. Plus, by comparison to canned food that's been sitting for x years, it's fresh meat, more filling, and ideally more healthy. 5) I found a NATO weapons box once that had the standard Arma 3 inventory loadout in it. Was this purposeful or accidental? 6) Enable the searching of trash piles for the standard loot that shows up in houses, shacks, etc. You can then lower the loot spawn in thicker areas like towns to decrease the FPS drop clients get hit with. Those map-based objects are free and they cost the player's PC no load at all in terms of calculations and the hitching that comes from createUnit/createVehicle calls. 7) Add the ability to siphon fuel out of the Zamak/Tempest/HEMTT fuel truck with an additional scroll option that reduces said fuel truck's fuelCargo value. 8) Suggest randomizing the maximum amount of fuel and water instances you can get out of water tanks and fuel sources; perhaps 2 to 5. 9) Players still die too easily to gunshots. If there's a HandleDamage EH being used on the player to magnify damage done by projectile, reduce it some. 10) Reduce negative effects of stamina and player aiming. Player aiming coefficient is unrealistic. Recommend setting it to no higher than 0.40. 11) If you do map-based loot pile spawn, recommend making it possible (albeit difficult) to find a usable tire in the tire pile objects. 12) A way of monitoring degree of radiation poisoning. I'm left with not knowing how much radiation an anti-rad pill is soaking up. You could modify the status window on the top right by giving degree of poisoning (i.e. "light radiation poisoning, moderate, heavy, etc) or when you take an anti-rad pill the cutText print on the bottom being more specific in its anti-radiation effects. 13) Do not include the loot pile container objects in your clean-up script. Instead, run a caching function (like the one I put in this thread for you) and have it hide those objects when the player gets a certain distance away. This will naturally work with multiplayer later on and will give a more realistic feel to the player. 14) Give the ability to drop an empty water bottle on the ground to be filled in the rain. It would require a separate function most likely that would monitor that water bottle and then change its object type after x seconds of rain filling it, depending upon degree of rain. It could be made to be a several minute long thing so as to keep getting water directly from fountains and tanks be more preferable. Or, lock the player in an action mode for 30 seconds, forcing them into a frozen animation, that makes them vulnerable. That's how I coded it in DayZ a long time ago. Either way, something that yields a dirty water bottle that requires the purification tablets. 15) Need a more comprehensive way of informing the player where the higher radiation zones are so a risk vs. reward situation can be presented -- "Since the big airport has much higher radiation, is it worth it to me to spend 30 minutes there looting? Or, should I go to a town away instead?" That kind of thing. Large, nearly transparent (setMarkerAlpha 0.10, 0.20 etc) markers on the map might be helpful if that's something you would consider. EDIT: A couple of edits I forgot. 16) Reduce the LOS distance a zed can see a player. It's too high and it disallows the ability for a player to sneak in and out of an area. To counter-balance this, increase the distance by which zed can hear gunshots. Also, and I'm not sure you did this, but make it possible for zed to hear footsteps. 17) Change the Raider AI setCombatMode to RED, if it's not already there, as they have a tendency to not try and chase a player. They tend to get distracted and continue on to their next waypoint. 18) Recommend creating a FiredNear EH for the raider to look towards the sound of gunfire and react with going crouch or prone if their Behaviour is not already in COMBAT. Same applies to player when with their Fired EH to trigger not just zed but also AI to look and setBehaviour to COMBAT. 19) I recommend setting Raider setCombatMode to AWARE by default. They tend to patrol on the streets in CARELESS or SAFE, whichever, making it unrealistic given the environment they're patrolling. 20) Allow the player to use chemlights, grenades, smoke, and other explosives as distractions to zed/Raider AI. I've got code written for this already you're welcome to use. 21) Campfires are damaging vehicles. Not sure if this was intended or not, but a campfire within about 15 seconds nearly destroyed a chopper of mine. Most everything else in this, other than what I've said previously (AI difficulty is slightly too high; I'd take their aiming accuracy down about 10%), is quite good. It's challenging, gritty, difficult, frustrating; everything that makes it good. But the 800lb gorilla in the room for me is the lack of food. Either stick in a critter generator that throws out the occasion sheep, or chicken, or hell even a snake, or something like that to increase the amount of game out in the field, or raise the canned food drops. With this, it's damn near IMPOSSIBLE to survive very long. I've even engaged one of the Raider camps that had about 20 guys, killed them all, and no food. It makes no sense given that they've got multiple campfires lit. Perhaps at each of these camps a small box with a few cans of food or dirty water nearby would be good. At least that source wouldn't be infinite as is the case with loot spawn generation. It also would stand to reason that they would have a small supply since, well, they have a camp. B

You'll get better at it as you go along.

It's not a problem with cleanup of dead corpses. I've noticed there is one of those running as it deleted a few dudes I managed to frag with a 'nade. They were gone within ten minutes, top, after I left the area briefly and came back. What causes lag in Arma is this: number of total objects on the map that have simulation and are not hidden, be they close to a player or not. That's what it is and always is. Those objects could be vehicles (empty or not), crates, and AI (with AI as units with everything enabled) being the biggest. In the case of Ravage, it could be a case of raider AI that have simulation still enabled even though a player has left an immediate area. I don't know this for certain but Haleks would probably know. I could see though after playing for many hours, and ergo travelling to different areas on the map which active what I believe are static raider spawn points (within cities and signature spots like the intl airport), that if these AI units are still alive and running around, that that would slow the machine down progressively. If that is the issue, then the solution is to disable their simulation and hide them. The AIV Manager function I posted in here several pages back would solve that, if Haleks doesn't already have something like that running. Past that, I can't see it being vehicles because I'm guessing all of those are created and placed at the beginning of the round and none thereafter. I could however see it being an accumulation of the loot-spawned objects used instead of weaponHolders for items on the ground. I am not sure if those are removed or not after a given time + player removal from the area. B

Yep, I did. I'll even fly out there now that I've got a setup established and check it out. B

Went there. Was bogus.

I got shot out of the pilot seat while I was flying a little bird over the international airport. That's not realistic. It was laser-beam accurate. I'm all for realistic fights as well, that's a big part of what makes the raiders so dangerous to deal with, but it shouldn't be THAT hard. B

Gives me an idea following yours re: food as military loot: MREs. B