(Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies

[MrN]

Wonderful story, thank you.

No problem, thank you. That mini-war I had in Dourdan was some of the best Flashpoint I've ever played.

I realise I still have a long way to go. I'm definately favouring the red-flag guys for a good beating, whenever I go North I seem to eat lead at a vicious rate. :-X  I just had a quick bash again by going to Arudy and it was a walk in the park in comparison to Larche. The flag is up now, whatever that means.

Did you say Sergei was dead?

I didn't. I don't know, to be fair I have taken quite a few casualties (I'm not officer material ) but I couldn't tell you who's alive/dead. I'm not used to paying attention to names.

She will be permanently resting.

The cutscene starting at the bottom of the ladder is a compromise.

Not a problem, I am merely acting as a war reporter instead of beta tester and telling you what has happened and my reaction.

[THobson]

That mini-war I had in Dourdan was some of the best Flashpoint I've ever played.

Thank you.  It is comments like that that provide the energy to fix what is left to be fixed.  It did sound good.  The reason you had so many loons to deal with is that the infantry in the convoys will get out to deal with you if you are detected close to the convoy.  I never experienced them getting back in the truck though ( except in the death scene ).  It means they lost contact with you.

Did you say Sergei was dead?
I didn't. I don't know, to be fair I have taken quite a few casualties (I'm not officer material ) but I couldn't tell you who's alive/dead. I'm not used to paying attention to names.

Sergei is the Russian you picked up at Houdan.  I believe he was your number 9 who got the chop at Dourdan.  He had something to tell you, but he would only do it when you were reorganising.  It is not mission critical, just a story diversion for atmosphere.  If you enjoy the mission it might be a good excuse to try it again sometime to find out.

I'm definately favouring the red-flag guys for a good beating, whenever I go North I seem to eat lead at a vicious rate.

This is fascinating.  In lots of little ways I have tried to introduce a 'sloppyness' into the southern army and a tightness into the northern army, the southern army also have a larger area to defend and so are more disperse.   Your comments are very helpful in seeing how this plays out.

You may not realise this but you are a very valuable asset.  Most of the beta testers and I have been on a journey together for several months, so we all know stuff about the mission that a new person will not.  It means we can have knowledgable conversations about what is going on but it is also very helpful to see how the mission plays 'from cold'.  Your reaction to reorganising the team is a particular case in point.

Thanks again.

[Mikero]

@Dagon

I get immense pleasure reading other's pain in this mission. It dilutes mine and is always nice to know I'm not alone.

@Thobson

Rifles on back's is one of my pet hates. If it had happened to me, i'd be screaming about it. That's the only reason I can say it hasn't happened, but cannot be 100% definite because <ahem> there's a lot of other things going on, n'est pas? Godzillas silently crushing you come to mind. Snipers castrating you *after* you've cleared everything is another, the odd mosquito jeep changing your underpants for you, things like that tend to distract you from small details , perhaps the worst (so far, and I do stress so far) was a mad woman appearing out of the mist at the same time as the wolves lit up. You sir, are an evil man, and I think I have mentioned that before, often. IF you'd scripted these things, well I could just hate you and leave it at that.

But, there might be a seemingly unrelated issue to rifles on back and pbo files. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes some missions have most or all of the squad in 'engage mode' when you start. About 1 in 200 missions go that way. Never found the reason.

[Dagon]

Very funny bug I just found;

after getting the soldier guy from the abandoned town, I set everyone on hold fire and drove around until I found an enemy camp; getting somewhat frustrated at instantly dying randomly I decided to ignore pedestrian rules.

Which is when I noticed it -

Enemies won't attack you if you're in certain vehicles and go around running them over!

Carmageddon ftw; but you might wanna take a look at this.

[dantheman]

Alright, I've downloaded Abandoned Armies V1.30.  Let's see if this so called 'lag free' mission is true which I have gathered from other beta testers.

Supposable benchmark: '5660'.  No ECP (Turned off).

Ok, fantastic intro like before.  Top marks .

Briefing:  cannot load mission, missing addons: 'seanagen'.  Gawd knows what that is.

I load up the misson and the lag is pretty bad but the mission has just started so I wait for a couple of minutes and it's gone pretty well.
  I climb up the steep cliff and to the small hamlet of Vigny.  Good decision to remove the fire as I reckon the player will explore the village more etc. like I did.  Easily took out the guards with my pistol, took an M16 and talked to Tatyana.  She wasn't bobbing up or down from what I've read before but there is a minor quiggle of mine which is that she's slightly off the bed.  Ya know, sitting right on the edge.  Well, at least for me.
  I take out the incoming guards as Tatyana stupidly runs off and gets killed etc.  I save it and the lag seems to be alright.  But considering that I'm not even in the skirmishing part etc. I'll be dreading what the lag will be for those parts.

  Anyways, I abort the mission which takes ages to get out of it.  I've got no idea really why Operation Flashpoint is so bad for my system.  I've a decent PC which I consider a gaming machince.  Well, I don't have a top of the range graphics card (ATi Radeon 9200 128 Mb) but I can't afford a new one due to forking out loadsa money for a new guitar.

Enemies won't attack you if you're in certain vehicles and go around running them over!

Yeah, I belive that's when you're in civilian vehicles such as the Police jeep.  I do that quite alot despite it's cheating  .

Oh, and THobson, have you considered in writing a book about this?  I find writing really relaxing (despite being a terrible writer!) and this mission just feels like a Tom Clancy one.  This is a really well thought out mission with an amazing, hook catching story line.

I hope these comments are useful, (despite you probably want to know how far people have got and what exciting things they've done etc.  Not the likes of me rambling on about lag  ;D.)

dantheman

[THobson]

Dagon:

Enemies won't attack you if you're in certain vehicles and go around running them over!

This is a real pain.  It is an OFP issue and should apply equally to all missions.  Others have found it and that is why I recently reduced the number of vehicles and fuel available in the mission.  I have a couple of points on this:

- It cannot be guaranteed to work (in fact it is definitly not a good idea if any armour is around)

- the punishment for the player for doing this is: 1. He will not get credit for these kills; 2. It is no fun to win by cheating.

I did consider scattering a few AV mines around to discourage the player form this type of behaviour.

I suppose I could put a {killed} EH on all the loons to check if the player is close by and in a vehicle pointing towards the recently departed loon, and then just blow the bastard up.  The occassional road death should be allowed so perhaps I could use a counter.  Perhaps not a an EH on all loons and a counter, just an EH on a random selection of loons.  You have set me thinking.  

Does anyone else have any thoughts onthis?

[THobson]

dantheman:

Briefing:  cannot load mission, missing addons: 'seanagen'.  Gawd knows what that is.

I certainly don't.  I have no addons on my machine other than the GB Editor upgrade - and never have had on this machine.

I load up the misson and the lag is pretty bad but the mission has just started so I wait for a couple of minutes and it's gone pretty well

A lot of initialization stuff is happening in the first 30 to 40 seconds of the mission.

She wasn't bobbing up or down from what I've read before but there is a minor quiggle of mine which is that she's slightly off the bed.  Ya know, sitting right on the edge

Sometimes she is like that, sometimes she is sitting so far back her legs don't extent beyond the edge of the bed.  I have made a change in the next version that should result in her being exactly where she should be

abort the mission which takes ages to get out of it.

It has a large file to create and then save.

I can't afford a new one due to forking out loadsa money for a new guitar.

Life is all about choices  

have you considered in writing a book about this

Lol.  No I hadn't, but it did occur to me when making the mission that the process I went through must be very similar to that which an author goes through when writing a novel.

I hope these comments are useful, (despite you probably want to know how far people have got and what exciting things they've done etc.  Not the likes of me rambling on about lag

They are indeed useful.  Thank you.  I certainly need to know about the lag and about where Tatyana is sitting, your views on the fire at Vigny, they all help.

Thanks

[macguba]

I experienced the weapon on back when getting out of a vehicle too.   I never use safe so its not me.

The civvy vehicles being immune thing I would ignore, other than limiting the number of such vehicles and their usefulness.  I'd keep the police jeep at Vigny, it is just the right vehicle.    Many players will not discover this trick:  most that do will only use it once or twice (which is fine):  and those that use it more will come to grief when they meet a tank as, if they use it a lot, they surely will.   Anybody who wants to use it a lot is punished by missing out on a great mission.

If you do want to do something, then any vehicle should be damaged for running people over.    If you get setdammage +0.1 every time you do it you ain't gonna do it for long.   Actually 0.1 is a bit harsh, maybe 0.05.    Mines and blowings up are too powerful and too random:  the punishment should be directly and obviously linked to the crime.

Bad addons are wierd.   Just because you've never downloaded it doesn't mean it can't appear in your mission.sqm.     I now suspect that when that happened to me it was due to a bad addon having an addon dependence thing, but I'm not sure.   However, since that error hasn't appeared for others who have played the same d/l, it is probably nothing to do with the file.

There is no material difference (other than the mechanics obviously) between writing a novel and creating a good mission.

@dantheman - what was your viewdistance set to?  I had lag when it was turned up too high, but since I couldn't see more than 20 yards it was a bit pointless.

[dantheman]

@dantheman - what was your viewdistance set to?  I had lag when it was turned up too high, but since I couldn't see more than 20 yards it was a bit pointless.

  My viewdistance was set to '800'.  Now that you mention it, I'm gonna go and have another go at it and set the viewdistance lower.  Hopefully that will sort out the problem.
  Also, I did have quite a few addons in my folder (due to me being hooked onto Dynamic Afgahnistan) so I'll delete all of the un-necessary addons leaving just the required ones in.

Cheers!

[macguba]

The minimum viewdistance is 500 so you won't get much bang for your buck there, although it all helps.   Remember to keep terraindetail to normal.    My benchmark is 3000 and I found the mission more than playable with viewdistance 1200, which just goes to show what a crock viewdistance is.  

Removing the addons will definitely help though.    Maybe switch off some background programmes too.

If all else fails select the reduced environmental effects in the dialogue at the start.

It does take a long time to exit.  It's just a very big file.

[Mikero]

>Police Jeeps

although i take the spirit of it as cheating. In this mission i intentionally use my jeep as a weapon. I'm so low in ammo, i consider it 'fair'. Another added wrinkle is you can only take this so far, in ways perhaps not discovered yet by some of you. Every colllision causes damage to the vehicle, that you know, what you may not know is at a certain level of damage, enemy loons take a delight in making you permanently damaged. I invite you to find out for yourself. Not only is it a surprise, it's another delight to experience   As usual, I blame the author for this added feature.

@dantheman

I'd put hefty money on lag being your baby. You have a (huge) quantity of addons there that are contributing nothing to the mission and a lot to it's memory use. SInce you play DynAfghan you already know about quite long load and save times so you might be talking *really* long load and save times. This is almost 100% because your ram is all used up and the OS is doing all it can to swap in / out virtual memory onto hard disk space to keep up. The save game is just competing with already intense activity on the drive.

back to the missing addons, the message you're getting is a classic for an addon conflict. Two or several addons have objects by the same name (which is a no-no) the wrongly pulled addon is dependent on another (missing one) and so it goes.. But by this time the damage is done in terms of memory hog, and potentially, lag issues if the addon has active animations / sounds / whatever.

The days of plunking addons in addons\ folder are over. You really do need to use mods\ folders, and if you're already doing that, you aint gone far enough in separating them all out. It's not an abandoned armies issue just good housekeeping and a Spring cleanout that will solve this. All your missions, especially DynAfghan, will benefit.

[dantheman]

Alright, just had a go at it lowering my distance to the minumum, lowering the resolution down to 640x480, turning ECP off etc. and is there a result.....?  In a way, yes.  Yet I still have problems with the lag and all which is still making the mission pretty much un-playable to my liking.  I've removed all my un-necessary addons in the directory and I believe it would've removed that 'missing addon' problem.
  Also, when I loaded the mission, I didn't really have any heavy, HEAVY, heavy, lag like previous times before which made the game literally un-playable (quite a while ago).

  This is all a shame as this is my sort of mission I would have loved to be playing.  All the choices you can make etc. plan your very own hit & ran targets etc.  That's the main reason why I play 'Dynamic Afgahnistan' so much, because of the endless missions where your own squad is fighting the war trying to bring the fighting strength/morale down of the Afghan rebels.

  Bah, I shouldn't fill this thread up with me complaining all the time!  I would like to thank you THobson and Macguba for all your help.  It's people like you that keep the Operation Flashpoint fire going on and on....    But when the finished version finally does come out I will download it, even if it's 'cause it'll look good in my mission folder.  ;D

Gawd Bless Ya!

dantheman

EDIT:  Cheers for the tips, Mikero!  I'm gonna go and do a 'spring clean' now.  I haven't really sorted out the mod folders yet but if ya reckon it's really gonna benefit the missions from them then I'll defeintly give it a try.  Thanks alot!
 

[macguba]

Mod folders are indeed the answer, combined with Kegetys ofp launcher.    

[dantheman]

Result!  Just made a mod folder for the mission using Kegetys OFP Launcher and started up the game and the mission has NO LAG!  So, you won't be hearing from me for awhile..... *Moves back in th black and plays Abandoned Armies*

dantheman

[THobson]

Wonderful news.  
Now as someone who is alergic to addons - can someone please tell me what I should put in the readme file to cover this?