[Camp] Feed

Not compatible with OA vanilla since WICT 1.8 released. Works with beta 71418 ftp://downloads.bistudio.com/arma2.com/update/beta/ARMA2_OA_Build_72418.zip

Feed,

and Regard Him Not

A very mini- single player campaign for Combined Operations.

Story

You are one of six officers who have been chosen to receive medals for your service in Takistan. A convoy stands ready to escort you to the UN base where the award ceremony is due to take place. An easy journey is anticipated, since Army Intelligence are convinced we are now in full control of the central region of Takistan. To impress this success upon the international media, the convoy will travel with an escort of only light vehicles and a couple of relatively lightly-armed air assets.

Serious

Motivation

After playing around with ArmaIIholic's first release of WICT, http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=103360 I wanted to use it in a more sophisticated mission, mixing the scripted with the dynamic. I like the atmosphere of tension it creates - you never know from where you will be attacked, and even if it is to some extent randomised, the behaviour of the enemy units (and friendly if you want) is entirely credible.

I wanted to create a scripted mission that had more of an 'on-rails' feeling than we are used to in Arma 2, with pletny of dialogue (probably gets annoying :p). I also wanted the player to be part of a convoy and under the command of AI units. This led to much frustration. The AI's driving seems to be acceptable now, and not break the immersion too much.

Features

-Use of playmove animations.

-Mortars, both at your command and hostile.

-Scripted SP action for those who don't always want to be a SpecOps Captain bossing everyone about .

-Your weapon choice is limited. You can't choose to have thermal optics and be a 21st century Future Soldier TM (unless you're a cold-hearted bandito who doesn't mind killing an AI fire-team leader at the mission start # hint, hint #).

-Dynamically spawned WICT OPFOR at controlled times during the missions.

-UAV module (if you succeeded in defending the convoy in the first mission).

-GITA module: so you won't know where every house will be positioned.

-Custom music track.

-Some silliness and humour.

-Save points. So you don't have to sit in the convoy doing nothing more than once ;).

Possible Issues

It's my first proper release, and nobody else has tested it. It relies on a good few triggers and is a beta. That should give an indication of what to expect!

I'd be grateful to hear any issues reported in this thread, and I'll try to fix them after I've had a couple of days of fresh air and sanity.

There shouldn't be any show-stopping bugs. I predict the following issues are most likely:

-The transition between missions one and two. The friendly AI should keep the same weapons they had and should be alive or dead as they finished the first mission. I say should... .

-At times, the convoy moves painfully slowly. This can't be helped; at least they stay on the road (and only shunt each other once or twice...). Use the '+' button and be glad that autosave is implemented.

Required Addons

ArmaIIholic's World In Conflict Tool (WICT): http://www.agapije.in.rs/data/downloadarma/WICT.zip

Armaholic mirror: World In Conflict Tool

Put the @Wict folder in your Arma 2 folder, then add the line -mod=@WICT to your Combined Operations desktop shortcut.

Recommended Addons

Operation Arrowbent by loosebruce: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=102480

Music choices for the two missions were made with the presumption this is installed, so they may turn out to be relevant OA tracks, or they may not.

Vielen Dank...

Nice work ! Downloaded and trying now :)

New version is out and it probably won't be compatible with scripted part. Unfortunately, in order to make WICT work smooth, I had to consider all units in the game when it comes to cleaning memory for spawning more -- consequence is that all alive units will participate in global assault - if there is known base.

Solution is:

-- either making script part with WICT turned off, or

-- increasing AI number so cleaning memory won't start immediately

I will install OA soon, just to make sure that my module is working ok under A2.

Then I will test your mission.

And right now, even without testing I can say well done, bro!

Looking forward to see you sanity ;)

That bloody convoy takes AGES !

Not your fault of course but BIS.

will check this out Thanks

New version is out and it probably won't be compatible with scripted part. Unfortunately, in order to make WICT work smooth, I had to consider all units in the game when it comes to cleaning memory for spawning more -- consequence is that all alive units will participate in global assault - if there is known base.

Thanks for the warning.

I can imagine this will only be a problem at the end of the second mission (in the first, as soon as WICT takes over, all the scripted units cease to matter) - it's possible WICT will take control of the scripted helo evac units. I'll give it a test and see. I can always rewrite the mission so that at the end I cut WICT off and then spawn the evac helos and a scripted final OPFOR attack. The only compromise is that the final attack will develop a bit less dynamically... . It's expected and desirable that WICT will continue to evolve.

Turns out it is a problem, but an easier work-around is simply to make both extraction choppers respond to radio triggers, rather than touch down automatically. I think I'll have to update the files anyway, in order to change my init.sqf with this new version.

Edit: updated file to beta 0.2.

- Fixed: Helicopter extraction. Both helos now land and take off on player's radio command. Chopper 2 won't take off without any other surviving officers in it, but I think that is perhaps a good thing (may be revised in the future).

- Fixed: Altered WICT AIgroup numbers for both missions; aim - to present a stiff challenge but not be unsurvivable.

- Fixed: init.sqf updated for proper compatibility with WICT version 1.8.

- Fixed: Campaign is now called 'Feed.PBO' rather than 'Feast.PBO' (late at night, nonsensical file names can manifest themselves... .)

- Known issue: Debriefings aren't functional. I need to look back at how my briefing.htmls are working.

Could you pls put this in a folder with an Info text?

Thanks. Could help other noobs like me out more.

Convoy never leaves the base and both SUVs explode at the base, riddled with bullet holes.

Can't continue the campaign.

As I said since I have only A2 installed I didn't test it, but here are few hints:

-- you can plan WICT to add certain amount of groups to the battlefield -- make .sqf that runs in the background and do some busy waiting in the beginning

while {count allGroups < WICT_numAIg} do {sleep X+2.5;}

After that just end the script by calling quit.sqs.

-- pump up WICT to spawn at the time X and increase the spawn distance (just take into account the distance from the base - if too close nothing will spawn) - make the WICT run fast in small intervals and without time randomization, in order to quickly spawn desired amount of units and then shut down

-- synchronize these two scripts by setting the time X+2.5 >> your WICT_time + WICT needs 2.5 seconds to finish the turn

The other solution (for WICT not taking control over "script" units) is to use it only for adding small and occasional amount of random units.

You can do that by setting spawning probability to 50% and not spawning probability to 50% (or any other combination a+b=100).

In other words base must have some "unused spawn points".

These are possible solutions for making WICT not interfere with scripted part of the mission.

(I will put these solutions in the next manual)

Best regards,

ArmAIIholic

-- Question? --

How did you create a convoy? You have an example of small convoy in my scripts, never had problem with their movement. The "crews" must be in the same group in column formation, that's all the trick. If the destination point is far away and behavior is careless or safe they will use the road(s) mainly. All you have to do is to put them near road and set destination point(s) on the roads or intersections, that's all.

Updated to beta 0.21. Some genius screwed up the helo extractions in the last version . Sorry for any inconvenience - everything is at least functional now, so I shouldn't be updating for a while.

-- Question? --

How did you create a convoy? You have an example of small convoy in my scripts, never had problem with their movement. The "crews" must be in the same group in column formation, that's all the trick. If the destination point is far away and behavior is careless or safe they will use the road(s) mainly. All you have to do is to put them near road and set destination point(s) on the roads or intersections, that's all.

Without bashing Bis' AI driving (too easy to blame everything on that), I had two problems which required the less than perfect solutions I've used.

1) I needed to have the different vehicles of the convoy as seperate groups so that I could manage them independently.

2) On some of the smaller roads I wanted to send them down, there seems to be a mismatch between the map image you see in the editor, (possibly the road texture itself in game) and where the AI think the road actually is. I presume this is a similar problem to the phenomenon in Chernarus where, with one of the smaller airfields, you could place a plane on the runway in the editor, only to find it was 20 meters wide of the runway once you fired up the game.

Cheer for the extra info about WICT.

Testing new version now.

cant start the missions cause of "downloadable content missing -mylogic"?

eh Nvm was late last night..^^

thx for this campaign, Richey79 !

I'm on playing Feed.pbo@beta0.21 with WICT 1.8 and with latest OA-beta.

Anyway, if I play with or without ACE, I suffer the same problem - I've put in spoiler :

btw. I have no errors at starting/loading campaign at all ... is this maybe a mismatch between the latest versions of Feed and WICT ? Should I try OA Vanilla (no beta, just official 1.52) and @WICT as the only mod being loaded ?

EDIT: Did so: OA Vanilla 1.52 and @WICT the only mod (...\ArmA 2\arma2oa.exe" -nosplash -noFilePatching -world=empty -mod=@WICT) and problem remains ... but why :confused: ?

At 'In Transit' I get in to Richard Wagner's (;)) SUV as I'm ordered to do - the other SUV just drives in circles from the road through the camp where I had the start-up conversation and back to the rest of the convoy - but the SUV I'm inside doesn't turn the engine on and so the other SUV's drives his circles on and on and on ... :) the light armoured hummv drives in his scripted order, too ... when I get into this hummv it's the same, nothing happens, no convoy heading direction 'Waldheim' -- So for now this seems to be a showstopper :( Or do I just have to wait longer ? is there any trigger I miss atm ?

Same problem here. The SUV wont start moving.

Could you pls put this in a folder with an Info text?

Thanks. Could help other noobs like me out more.

Convoy never leaves the base and both SUVs explode at the base, riddled with bullet holes.

Can't continue the campaign.

Cheers for the comments on this problem (kind of a show stopper!). Missed yours the first time around Kk.

There's no ACE compatibility, and probably won't be.

I think the problem will be that I permanently use the latest beta and haven't tested under the vanilla OA patch: I'll test and update in a bit.

'SUVs explode at base riddled with bullet holes'. I made it so that if one SUV or one of the two drivers becomes immovable, they'll both become destroyed. Sounds kind of daft, but the reasoning behind this is that once one of the SUVs or drivers goes down, WICT activates and you're on your own in a dash to the edge of Imarat pursued by lots of enemy units.

If either SUV were drivable, it's an easy trip if you just hop in it and race to the end of the mission - makes a mockery of the thing.

So, that's probably what's happening to the SUVs. However, I now have to find the cause. Cheers for letting me know rather than just saying 'sod this' and ignoring the mission.

Edit: Yup, that's the problem. Notice the soldiers doing push ups spread around as if they're completely random? They should be in three neat lines. Bis must have altered something with the latest betas. I'll see how much work would be involved to move stuff into a logical order for an alternative version and change the first post to reflect the problem.

For now, if you want to try the missions, I'm using beta 71418 ftp://downloads.bistudio.com/arma2.com/update/beta/ARMA2_OA_Build_72418.zip

---------- Post added at 11:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:05 AM ----------

I found the root of the problem when using the campaign, WICT 1.8 and OA vanilla 1.52 together.

Everything's fine in the editor until I add my WICT Usersettings folder. Then, all my AI units throw a wobbler and won't do what they should. This despite the fact that WICT isn't even turned on at that stage in the mission!

I think this problem is related to the latest version of WICT: the AI units are trying to 'think for themselves' and their movements are being motivated by where they think the WICT flags are, rather than my waypoints and instructions.

It's possible I'll find another way to ensure the WICT scripts are fully quitted, but I'm not going to put too much time into this, because the missions will work fine with WICT once Bis release their next 'proper' patch, and everyone still has a way they can use this mission if they want.

Cheers,

I responded here. I hope it will be helpful.

Cheers

Same problem here. The SUV wont start moving.

Same problems.

Let me know how you get it going, if and when.