(Review Completed) [SP] OPERATION RATTLESNAKE V2.1

[GW]

one thing i must say,upper side of village is well defended as comparison to down side of road.why spetnez not in town,they have good detecting power in ofp.

[Gruntage]

That's a good question. The spez naz groups (which number two the last time I looked) were assigned 'guard' waypoints, so they do occasionally venture to the east and southern side of the base. I hadn't really noticed a difference in defence within the town. Four groups circle the town to make for a thorough defence. If you approach the town when most of the four groups are on the west and northern side then obviously the east and southern side will appear poorly-defended.

This of course allows the player to infiltrate. It's up to the player to calculate when the best time to venture into the base is (the best time would ofc be when most of the patrolling groups are on the opposite side of the town to you).

Think that addresses your points.

[Undeceived]

Played this, Gruntage - fantastic job! Installed OFP for it (ok, this isn't quite an obstacle today ) and immediately was set back to that awesome and incomparable atmosphere.

The mission was great. I (and number 2) first knocked on the back door which means that I went west of the village and cleared out all reinforcement troops (including that dangerous Spetsnaz unit). Then I went "arcade" and shot all 4 Shilkas with RPGs from the distance, which took me some reloads but eventually I got them all. Vamoosed further to the west, ordered 3, 4 and 5 to take cover in some bushes, then went around the village to get them out of there, as they were surrounded by enemies, though undetected. It was good to meet them as I really was dry on ammo. Then we went to the northeastern escape point.

Loved the outro too! Great work.

Alright - so as you don't have anything current to test/play, I thought I'd say thank you for your efforts on Black Lands by playing this. It was a lot of fun and - I'd love to see some new stuff from you as you're a very experienced mission designer!

[Gruntage]

Heh, I didn't realise anyone was still playing this  Thanks for your comments. Very old project now though, but I still play it every now and again for nostalgia.

I have started (but never finished) a lot of projects over the years (for both ArmA 3 and OFP), but I'll be honest, what's put me off finishing them is the fact that they're not really original and there isn't really anyone to test them. I made missions for people to play and have fun with, not really for myself.

Reason why I haven't been able to look at Black Lands this week is because I've had to work in the evenings. I have got some free time this weekend though so I will give it a look.

[Undeceived]

In my opinion originality isn't the only deciding factor. Quality also is which is why I encourage you to release some more stuff as I saw a lot of it in the mission. (among some original things like the countdown and the possibility to prevent the alarm)

Don't worry because of BL - I still haven't got far after the latest update.

[Inlesco]

Hey Gruntage! I've just got on vacation this week and decided to check out some of the gems I've enjoyed back in the day!

Damn, I read my own comments in this thread and it looks like I used to take all of this a little too seriously, as if we're making official missions to be released in a retail version . Well, life goes on and teaches you things. Time heals, time teaches, I guess.

Just wanted to chime in and ask how you're doing, my friend. Perhaps you're up for a quick OFP / Arma CWA MP game or something? Chererio!

[Gruntage]

Hey dude! Long time no see 

It's really nice that people are still playing this even after all these years. I was just barely out of high school when I made it! It's funny really that I haven't come close to making anything anywhere near as good as this since and I've been dabbling in A3 for nearly a decade.

I guess we did take this stuff seriously back then; we all wanted to make the next Abandoned Armies, the next Black Lands or the next Unimpossible Mission. We were all driven to reach new heights, and I do miss the community back then. I always wanted to make missions for other people to play and not for myself, so when things went quiet I kinda lost my motivation. But perhaps that will change once A4 bounces around in whatever decade that happens to be 

Anyway, I'm doing pretty good these days. How are things with you? I haven't played online OFP in years  ; will have to see how it feels to play .

[Inlesco]

Hey @Gruntage!

In short - thanks to my stubbornness and outright stupid excessive curiosity [that OFP Editing probably sparked], I got a little bored with OFP editing back in 2012 and started doing web programming (you know, the typical tech stack for a self-taught newbie: PHP, Javascript, CSS, HTML, MySQL, Wordpress, Woocommerce, Magento and stuff).

I fell in love with it because of the variety of problems to solve and varying projects to work on. Still doing programming to this day, ~11 years later (freelancing now).

I have some more free time to dedicate on things I used to enjoy now and that's why I'm slowly coming back into the Armaverse / OFPverse. Slowly, but surely.

Perhaps you use Discord? My nickname is inlesco there. We could probably chat a little there, recalling the olden days and whatnot.

And BTW - there's this nice OFP / ACWA Discord community (the biggest and most active one I've seen so far) of die-hard OFP maniacs. Check it out . Link: https://discord.gg/SUhSseCe

[Inlesco]

Oh, and about the seriousness of our intentions that you and I mentioned - I was in high-school at that moment. A very chaotic time period, so to say .

And the ambition was through the roof... To possibly travel to Czechia and work at BIS there. IIRC, I even applied to BIS for a 2011 Summer internship in Mnisek Pod Brdy. Probably crazy for a 17 year old to do, though, come to think of it.

You got me chuckling with the part mentioning Abandoned Armies and other outstanding OFP missions and us trying to follow in the footsteps of our OFP Editing and Modding forefathers.

We did the best we could, though. We should be proud of ourselves (I'm not too proud, though, as I lost a ton of unfinished OFP missions I had back in the day, sitting on an old HDD ).

[Gruntage]

That sounds awesome! I did consider at one point going into a computer science-related career, but my heart was always in design which is where I ended up and still am to this day 

To be honest I don't think applying to BIS back then was that crazy; it could easily have led to something. I think Zipper made a mission or a campaign (Operation Cobalt I think) for Arma 2 that I think got him noticed by the guys at BIS and he was hired as a developer if memory serves.

Yeah I think we did a good job and we had quite a lot to live up to considering what came before. I kinda wish I had gotten into editing sooner when there was still a flurry of activity on here; I might have been able to produce more missions. But it would have been tough for my teenage brain to get around all of the scripting required.

I do indeed use discord! I'll PM you a link