JTD Smoke Effects MP Beta 5

OK, I didn't get the chance to try it out first hand, but I guess I'd better release it sometime

JTD Smoke Effects MP Beta 5.21

Mirrors (v5.21):

ArmedAssault.info

ePrison.de

ArmABase.de

Mirrors (for version 5.2):

Armaholic

The @JTD structure will replace the former @DMSmokeEffects, this is the group under which I will be working with from now on. (Some of the individual addons will retain the DM prefix as the internal scripting uses it.)

This release of JTD Smoke Effects contains 3 addons:

Smoke effects. Now should be fully MP friendly, in that each player should see the same thing. Can be configured to a small extent, including switching viewblock on & off.

Smoke grenade viewblock. Adds viewblocking abilities to smoke grenades, with a few restrictions. *Contains a bonus DAC replacement script to give DAC smokeshells viewblock properties*

Hide. Hiding now possible, but firing will give you away

Obviously you can remove any of the addon files you don't require.

Download includes BiKeys, which are beta keys for this release. I've never used them before and these are untested, however they've been made as per the instructions so I have full faith in them

The readmes:

Quote[/b] ]DMSmokeEffects beta 5 Multiplayer by DM.

*Please note that DMSmokeEffects is now part of the JTD group*

**This addon requires Extended Event Handlers addon by Solus**

This beta includes:

DMSmokeEffects, thick billowing smoke for helicopters & fuel trucks, and thick black smoke for tanks etc. After about a twenty

minutes (default timing, can be affected by multiplier in ArmA\dta\DMSmokeEffects_Config.hpp file) the smoke changes to

smoldering smoke. After another twenty minutes the smoldering smoke peters out. If it rains, the smoldering smoke will steadily

get lighter in colour and will extinguish quicker, depending on how fast it's raining. After about three-quarters of an hour the

average battlefield will be clear of smoke generally, but there's randomness coded in.

Improved building collapse effects. Basically just made the existing effect 10x bigger and last 10 times longer. Also made the

dust grey, heavier, and more difficult to see through for longer.

Grenade effects. I'm really happy with this one, it looks almost exactly the same as footage I reseached on grenades. A sudden

"poofing" of instantaneous dark smoke, which lightens and drifts & settles over 10 or so seconds.

Various improved effects & settings. Tank rounds that miss their target & impact the ground will now throw up huge clods of

earth for example.

*NOTE* THIS ADDON NO LONGER HAS THE SMOKE GRENADE VIEWBLOCK FUNCTIONALITY. THIS IS NOW A SEPARATE ADDON.

Quote[/b] ]DMSmokeGrenadeVB v1.4

*This release also requires the Extended Init Eventhandlers addons.*

First of all, this addon is no longer included in the DMSmokeEffects addon. So if you want smoke grenade viewblock, you need this addon.

This addon will add a viewblock object to smoke grenades. The viewblock object is invisible to the player, but will effectively block the view of AI in, through or past the smoke grenade smoke volume. It is also reactive to wind direction & strength.

Currently the smoke ammo supported list looks like this:

"SmokeShell","SmokeShellRed","SmokeShellGreen","G_40mm_

Smoke","G_40mm_RedSmoke"

if there's any I've missed, or you would like me to add your own variants, let me know ASAP.

There is an issue (bug) in ArmA that unfortunately impacts on this addon. In multiplayer, clients who throw objects do not generate a global "fired" event, and so clients who throw smoke grenades will not have the viewblock smoke.

HOWEVER... if a client FIRES a smokeshell, it will. This means that grenadiers with smokeshells become very useful. It sucks about the thrown ones, but there you go.

Note that the above problem has been solved. DMSmokeGrenadeVB is now fully MP compatible for fired AND thrown smoke grenades.

As a bonus extra, there is a DAC replacement script included in the folder DAC2_SmokeGrenadeVB that will give DAC2 smoke grenades AI viewblock functionality.

Quote[/b] ]DMHide by DM v1.0

*Extended Init Event Handler required*

This is a simple little idea - a place to hide. Now that more & more AI addons are having some sort of a "search" functionality I thought it would be nice to be actually able to hide. To this end, this addon will spawn a doughnut-shaped viewblock object around you to hide inside. There used to be a visible element to this addon, but I removed it on request so now you need to be extra careful .

The doughnut shape means that although you can be hidden from AI that are searching for you, if they get too close they can see "down" into it, and see you. They have to be quite close, and they have to also be looking in your direction. The doughnut-shape will spawn under the ground, and over the course of 50 seconds or so will rise up, gradually hiding you. No insta-hide I'm afraid

Also, each time you fire or throw a weapon (grenade for example), the hide will drop by 25cm, equivalent to half it's height. It will then start to slowly rise up again. This is so that snipers can hide out & snipe reasonably safely, but not too often lest they give their position away.

After two closely spaced shots for example, you will be fully exposed for some time. If the hide gets below a certain depth under the ground due to too many shots too close together, it will disappear altogether and you'll need to re-hide, which you won't be able to do for a random amount of time not less than 20 seconds and not more than 40.

Also, moving more than 1m in any direction from the initial hide position will also make it disappear. Dying will make it disappear.

This is probably functional in MP, but my guess is both server & clients must have it. It is totally untested in MP. Obviously you won't be invisible to human players, so if there's human players you must *actually* hide . Quite obviously this addon is meant to fool AI only, with severe restrictions. It works best if you remove yourself from the area you suspect will be searched and hide nearby.

Enjoy it for what it is, it's not meant as some sort of cheat, but rather a way to inject some amount of tension into a game that has AI enhanced search functionality, primarily for SP gaming.

This has been tested as having good gameplay with UPS, TrueRangeAI and Suppression, and DAC2. But especially UPS & DAC2, which will come looking for you

*edit* there is an inbuilt anti-cheat mechanism that prevents two or more players from sharing one hide. So you might be ingenious for thinking that you can snuggle up to your hide-buddy while shooting all you like, but you'll both get exposed after a few shots. Other players will affect your hide if they're within 7 meters of you. (As far as I can tell anyway, as I said it's untested in MP.)

As I mentioned, all untested first hand by me. I'll be very interested to hear people's reports on the MP functionality. I'd like to extend my thanks to Steel_WOF and RLGaming.com group and Wings of Fury for the testing they did, their findings were very encouraging for me and prompted this release. Their finding was that the smoke effects were successfully transmitted across MP clients, with no penalties for players NOT using the addon except for lack of smoke effects obviously.

PLEASE read the readmes. In particular the smoke effects readme as it describes where to place the config file. The config file allows you to affect particle lifetime, smoke source lifetime, and viewblock switching on/off both serverside and clientside. Beware, viewblock smoke is a big FPS eater for large armour battles.

I hope everyone enjoys the release, and that it works

Beautiful. Thank you for the new version of this classic. It's always a treat seeing the new aspects you've added in game. I look forward to checking this out.

ArmA just isn't the same without these effects, FPS be damned, I like the immersion just so damn much.

Great work as usual!

Mirror by ePrison.de

JTD Smoke Effects MP v5.2 BETA by DMarkwick

Regards,

Stavanger

Frontpaged at the Armaholic.com homepage.

The Armaholic.com download page can be found here:

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=1631

Ah, thanks DMarkwick! Updated the list, I'll give it a quick test run before calling it a night :-) Cheers!

Thanks.

Oh sweet! I'm looking forward to checking this bad boy out tonight! Thanks for putting so much into your addons man, its guys like you that really brings ArmA to life.

Wow, thanks DMarkwick

ArmABase.de Mirror and News:

DMarkwick ´s DMarkwick JTD Smoke Effects

Kind regards

Miller

Nice work, once again. Thanks.

Thank you again - this is one addon that is always loaded! And now it gets even better - thank you so much!!

Truly exceptional!

Can't wait to see what else you have planned!

wow)

very impressing work0)

thanx alot)

Really like these effects. I do have one issue however. When damaged wrecks despawn (or get salvaged as in warfare maps) the grey 'ground' smoke remains for a very long time afterwards. Would it be possible to set a time for this type of effect? or even have the mod detect when the wreck of the veh causing the smoke effect has been removed from play?

Really like these effects. I do have one issue however. When damaged wrecks despawn (or get salvaged as in warfare maps) the grey 'ground' smoke remains for a very long time afterwards. Would it be possible to set a time for this type of effect? or even have the mod detect when the wreck of the veh causing the smoke effect has been removed from play?

This is one of the things I considered, but I left it smoking because the purpose of the addon is to give a sense of battlefield "history" and to allow players to see where the hotspots are from a distance.

If there's enough demand for the feature I can do it, but myself I rather like the way it is. Having it as a config setting might be possible, but it'd be fiddly

There is a very strong possibility that the smoke grenade MP throw bug in ArmA can be overcome. More than very strong actually, it's almost definite. Xeno, the guy who made the Domination! mission has fixed it for me using coding fidgey-widgeyness.

This means that any player who throws a smoke grenade in MP will generate a viewblock object, making smoke grenades useful against AI. As some of you know this was previously a problem for thrown smokeshells in MP (fired smokeshells were always OK) and is a great step forward for the addon.

Next few days I'll release a v5.21 package, when I'm sure that it all works fine.

Quote[/b] ]Really like these effects. I do have one issue however. When damaged wrecks despawn (or get salvaged as in warfare maps) the grey 'ground' smoke remains for a very long time afterwards. Would it be possible to set a time for this type of effect? or even have the mod detect when the wreck of the veh causing the smoke effect has been removed from play?

I too would like this function as i play cRCTI and it's rather annoying having the smoke burning without a vehicle present. I had to remove the smoke addon. Shame, as it is absolutely awesome. It really does add to the battlefield. Great for missions without respawning vehcles but looks weird with despawned vehicles.

I hope you consider it or create a separate config for us Warfare & cRCTI addicts. Excellent job mate.  

This means that any player who throws a smoke grenade in MP will generate a viewblock object, making smoke grenades useful against AI. As some of you know this was previously a problem for thrown smokeshells in MP (fired smokeshells were always OK) and is a great step forward for the addon.

I'm very happy to read this news, I had been waiting this feature for a long time ago. Thank you very much DMarkWick and Xeno... the coop missions will be different after the v5.21.

Does this still work as a server side only addon? I'm currently using DMsmokeeffects4_3b and would like to upgrade to this newer version.

Does this still work as a server side only addon? I'm currently using DMsmokeeffects4_3b and would like to upgrade to this newer version.

Well DMSMokeEffects has never worked as a server side only addon, it only ever worked as a client-side only addon, until now. If you're using DMSmokeEffects to perform serverside viewblock in MP games, then yes this version is better.

In fact this version (hopefully) should totally replace all previous versions.

That makes this version all the better! Downloading and installing now!

Many thanks

This means that any player who throws a smoke grenade in MP will generate a viewblock object, making smoke grenades useful against AI. As some of you know this was previously a problem for thrown smokeshells in MP (fired smokeshells were always OK) and is a great step forward for the addon.

Thats really great news DMarkwick! I was planning to look into this myself and see if I could come up with some workaround using publicVariable etc. but haven't had much time lately.

Thanks to Xeno and yourself for getting over that nasty MP issue....

PS: I really hope BIS are going to give us working stock smoke grenades in ArmA II.

/KC

Does this still work as a server side only addon? I'm currently using DMsmokeeffects4_3b and would like to upgrade to this newer version.

Well DMSMokeEffects has never worked as a server side only addon, it only ever worked as a client-side only addon, until now. If you're using DMSmokeEffects to perform serverside viewblock in MP games, then yes this version is better.

In fact this version (hopefully) should totally replace all previous versions.

I see. So, let me get this right.. viewblock works as server side, but the fancy smoke stuff needs to be both client and server?

I see. So, let me get this right.. viewblock works as server side, but the fancy smoke stuff needs to be both client and server?

Well it's a little more complex... let me try & explain as best I can.

First off, server needs to have the addon. Clients can choose whether to or not.

By default, all viewblock is disabled. This is how I recommend it's run, as viewblock is a FPS killer when there's lots of smoke.

If the serverside addon is viewblock enabled (via the config file in ArmA\dta folder) then all serverside AI will be subject to AI viewblock. My understanding is that any units under your command will NOT be subject to it, so there is the option of enabling clientside AI viewblock which your units WILL be subject to.

Something like that

So if you want AI viewblock smoke, my recommendation is to run it serverside only. I doubt very much that you'll notice the benefits of clientside smoke, and it will only drag down your FPS.

I see. So, let me get this right.. viewblock works as server side, but the fancy smoke stuff needs to be both client and server?

Well it's a little more complex... let me try & explain as best I can.

First off, server needs to have the addon. Clients can choose whether to or not.

By default, all viewblock is disabled. This is how I recommend it's run, as viewblock is a FPS killer when there's lots of smoke.

If the serverside addon is viewblock enabled (via the config file in ArmA\dta folder) then all serverside AI will be subject to AI viewblock. My understanding is that any units under your command will NOT be subject to it, so there is the option of enabling clientside AI viewblock which your units WILL be subject to.

Something like that

So if you want AI viewblock smoke, my recommendation is to run it serverside only. I doubt very much that you'll notice the benefits of clientside smoke, and it will only drag down your FPS.

Thanks for the reply.

I turned viewblock on.

<table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td>Code Sample </td></tr><tr><td id="CODE">#define DMSmoke_Viewblock_server_Enable true

I do understand the thing about AI I create and command being local to me and not the server and therefore not being affected by server side mods.

When I mentioned client side smoke, I meant the thick oily plumes of smoke going high into the air, more eye candy than view block. Does that have to be client side?