Has anyone thought about modifying the mechanics of the Ambient Civilian generator?

I notice the Ambient Civilian Generator (expansion) has some pretty good house patrols and does a great job making cities look busy.

Why not replace the civilians with soldiers of whatever faction is needed. Then you have enemies in each city ready to go.

Sound any good?

Unless you want soldiers blinking in and out of existence constantly during dedicated server multiplayer, I'd stick to any of the community made patrol scripts for now. :)

I was making a batch of single player missions. I'd still use it. I don't suppose ya'll would know where to go to find out how to copy and write in a new module?

(I live out in the sticks my internet connection is so horrid I have a hard time getting to this forum)

(I live out in the sticks my internet connection is so horrid I have a hard time getting to this forum)

That's not you, it's a few hops from the forums themselves. At work I'm basically on an OC3 connection direct to AT&T yet every single page load takes 2-3 seconds on average to open up (which in computer terms is like asking someone how their day is going and having to wait till next week to find out what they said). It pisses me off to no end, but that's since my connection from here routes through telia.net which makes my hops go from sub 10ms to 130ms then there's some crap routers between them and casablanca.cz where the connection is even worse. :mad:

I don't see any point in replacing civilians with soldiers. Why? Isn't it enough to spawn armies right on the battlefield or in HQs? Why houses?

I don't see any point in replacing civilians with soldiers. Why? Isn't it enough to spawn armies right on the battlefield or in HQs? Why houses?

Because CQC is where it's at! Some of my most exciting experiences in OA so far have come from clearing buildings.

Oh, you had OA on thought. I had ArmA2 where are very few buildings with interiors

I wonder if anyone has done it already... or knows how...

There's some really nice HousePatrol and BuildingFill scripts out there.

I know. I've looked at a few. I'm the type of builder who is trying to load 100% of the map with a low computing cost simulation of a fully occupied territory.

So one could fly anywhere fight anywhere and still have stuff to do. I'm trying to find a smooth way of populating large areas without having to invest many of the 144 groups to doing house patrols.

I'm working on filling all of Takistan with patrols and bases.

A modified Ambient Civilian Generator would do all the cities for me. That would fill in alot of gaps.

Well, you could break open the module and just adjust the scripts how you wanted them, run them from the mission directly or even remodulerize (is that a word?) it! :)

Well, you could break open the module and just adjust the scripts how you wanted them, run them from the mission directly or even remodulerize (is that a word?) it! :)

My scripting IQ is Forest Gump level. I'm a copy paste monkey. : o (

You speak Greek to me.

I'd prolly want to modify it so that there is a randomized chance of the soldiers existing within a given city when it becomes populated. I'd also want to make sure not to mess with the real Ambient Civilian Module.

(I've just been addicted to this genre of games since OFP so, I've picked up the basics over time.)

OK, I've been having a look at the Op:Arrowhead modules, and I'm having trouble locating the civilian module. Perhaps though lifting some behaviours from another module would work (when I find it), perhaps the ACM. I don't know how I would set it up as a new module though, even if it would work.

Edit: It would probably be easier to modify the ambient combat module with the spawning systems of the civilian module.

Why not replace the civilians with soldiers of whatever faction is needed. Then you have enemies in each city ready to go. Sound any good?

I didn't test this myself, but I will as soon as I get a chance. You may give the ALICE-civvies weapons with the following line of code:

[bIS_alice_mainscope,"ALICE_civilianinit",[{_this addweapon "Mk_48"}]] call bis_fnc_variablespaceadd;

Example taken from the BIKI. Replace MK_48 with a weapon of your choice and don't forget to give them some ammo as well. Set Civilian friendly to none and off you go. It should create an interesting and rather dangerous patrol mission for a small squad :)

A word of warning. Your AI followers will not open fire on these enemy combatants, unless you tell them to do so by giving target and fire orders through the command menu. Hence it works best for all player missions, or a situation where you and your men are only allowed to fire on a direct order. It's tough to be a peace keeper these days...

Is there any way to fix ambient civs to work in multiplayer dedicated? It's too nice a feature to be 'broken' unless BIS doesn't want us having civilians in multiplayer easily.

Something like this? ;) Quick example with west units (just used BIS_US faction without removing pilots etc). Also, forgot to change the vehicles, plus there are a bit too many spawned as I was testing AI traveling to other towns. :)

fLr0MtI1wwI

Since you already made a working example, could you share the script?

Well if the ambient civilian generator was modified to have the civilians changed to OPFOR militia or something handy like that... and give them an appropriate mix of weapons... (randomized) then it would kickass.

Don't make it always spawn but make it happen like to where half of the time in a city you are gonna have a nice fight.

This would make some of the spread out missions I make alot better. I wish I had the skills to actualize what I've imagined.

subscribing to thread:D

Since you already made a working example, could you share the script?

I actually started from scratch last night. So, nothing to share at the moment. Obviously, I will be able to reuse most of the code, but I'll share the whole thing when it's in a point that I'm happy with it.

The reason its 'blinking' in and out, is because BIS are very busy. Doing the following is quite hard. ;)

Remembering the only changes are:

> to a < and > to a ==

Ie

if (_active && {_town distance _x > _spawnDisMax} count _players > 0) then {

to

if (_active && {_town distance _x < _spawnDisMax} count _players == 0) then {

They won't blink at the moment if all players are in the same town, or all players out side of any towns. All or nothing basically.

Hopefully coming in the next patch... then again that was posted up for Dwarden over a month ago now...

http://dev-heaven.net/issues/11613

I think in all seriousness for the delay is because the original author isn't around, and their scared of touching his scripts...

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If you need ALICE, use this as temporary fix: http://dev-heaven.net/attachments/download/7369/alice2temp.7z

Just execute the module\alice2.sqf and it will work as it should, no blinky blink.

Very nice shk! Would be interesting in seeing a demo mission too!

I hope the next Arma evolution includes some kind of overhaul to AI behavior in urban areas. I wish I could have squads pursue enemies into buildings or stand outside and just frag the shit out of a building.

(once they'd discovered there was an enemy inside)

This mod to the Ambient Civilian Module might need to have some controls randomizing the composition of generated forces. Also the spawn distance might be important too. Like 500m so that when you approach a village you can observe it at a distance to check for the presence of enemy forces ect. A way to change the faction present inside would also be handy.

Debugging with test/default settings: