(Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies

[macguba]

The review has been completed.

This mission scored 10/10, the first time a mission submitted to OFPEC has attained this score.    Since it's no longer a beta this thread is being locked.   You may comment on the completed version on the reviewed mission thread.

Well done THobson!



#Locked

[Nixer6]

So far....very nice.

But, for "abandoned" amries they sure are well armed! 

[Planck]

Well armed???.....Are you sure?

When I played this, on an individual basis soldiers were very short of ammo.
Maybe only have 2 magazines.

LAW and RPG soldiers were lucky to have 2 rockets.
Armour quite often had less than a full complement of shells.....etc etc


Planck

[Bj]

So far....very nice.

But, for "abandoned" amries they sure are well armed! 

abandoned= no support from their respective militaries and society.

being abandoned doesn't mean being unarmed. One of the constant thoughts I had was bullet count in this mission. For the first time playing OFP I counted rounds. So even though they where well armed, they weren't well supplied.

[SugarPlumFairy]

ok well first off better know how to use your compass,lol. not bad at all, still working on it .story line is good.runs pretty smooth.good job so far :good:will fill in when finished the mission,might be awhile

[Nixer6]

By well armed I meant APC's and tanks!

Haven't had the opportunity to acquire any ant-armor weapons yet..............

[XCess]

Wow, I seem to have found an old review of Abandoned Armies I wrote for XCessOFP.tk way back in April, thought I might aswell post it up here 

Abandoned Armies - by THobson
This is one mission I will never forget. In fact, scratch that, this is one game I will never forget.

Abandoned Armies took the OFP engine, and pushed it to the extreme. This is an entire island, filled with a real enemy that goes through it's daily routine minute by minute, hour by hour.
There's no spawn zones, the units you face in Abandoned Armies are there from the start, and yet.. they fill an entire island.

I thought a mission like this would be impossible before playing it, I thought it would create massive amounts of lag making the mission simply unplayable. But THobson proved me wrong.

With 130 scripts, THobson has created a living world within the OFP engine, one in which every player action affects the outcome. Groups will join up when low in numbers, they will disembark their vehicles when they see something suspect, and then they will get back in the vehicle and continue their patrols if they see nothing, or deal with the problems.

The overall objective is to save the island of Malden from two opposing forces, the northern force controlled by Stamenov, an ex spetz natz commanding well trained, proffesional soldiers. To the south, the rabble force of Andropov, the infamous police chief of Nogova. His force maybe unskilled, but their determination in avoiding their commanders well proven wrath keeps them fighting for their very lives.

And what force does the player have? A small band of resistance fighters, many of which have never fired a gun before in their life. But they have a thirst for revenge. Having their families slaughtered and their homes occupied by rapists and murderers, they will fight with every ounce of strength in their body until they reach either victory.. or their death.

How could such a small force defeat not one, but two armies. Both of which using better weapons and better vehicles, not to mention tanks and helicopters... Well, you'll just have to play the mission for yourself to find out.

One thing I can tell you, when you play Abandoned Armies, your view of OFP will be greatly improved.

[reFlex]

okay I am experiencing quit abit of lag during the initial period of the game (after entering Vigny) and heading to find uncle in mountains between Arudy and Larche.

I running with reduced settings enabled and have ensured that I only have the official OFP/Res pbo files in the Addons and Res/addons folders (no unofficial addons other than editorupdate102_genbed installed).  I have no other mission mods installed either.

My OFP Video settings are:
-------------------------------
Terrain Detail: Normal
Visibility: 1093
Visual Quality: 6..18
Frame Rate: 10..20
Hardware T&L: Enabled
Multitexturing: Enabled
W-buffer: Disabled
Object Shadows: Enabled
Vehicle Shadows: Enabled
Cloudlets: Enabled
Blood: Enabled


My System requirements are:
-------------------------------------
AMD Athlon 64 2200MHz 3500+
Asus A8V Deluxe MB
2GB PC3200 DDR SDRAM
ATI Radeon 9800 PRO
Benchmarking score of 6250


Any recommendations or suggestions would be appreciated-

[bedges]

try turning off object and vehicle shadows (it's night-time), blood and cloudlets. you can re-enable them later when the mission system has settled down and the sun comes up.

abarm does suffer a little from lag at the beginning of the mission - part of the reason for the massive climb up the crevasse - but it does ease up a little later on.

[macguba]

Nice review XCess.   

dan brown, I'm slightly puzzled.    You have a very decent setup and lag should not be a problem.   Normally I would suggest cleaning out your addons folders it you appear to have done that already.   You should be able to play the mission, on full environmental settings, without too much trouble.

I can only suggest some serious routine computer maintenance.     And check again for other programmes running in the background. 

Oh, and

Welcome to the forums!

[THobson]

I agree.  With that set up you should be able to run the mission with full environmental effects.  There is an initialisation period of about 20 to 30 seconds for the mission but after that there should be no performance hit.

As mac says the first place to look is for an untidy addons folder but as you have only the minumum required this can't be the problem.  At least one beta tester claimed that Norton AV was causing them performance problems.  I must say that I also use NAV and have experienced no such issue.  In terms of possible solutions I am afraid I can add nothing to what macguba has suggested.  Sorry


XCess,

Thank you.

[reFlex]

thanks all for your responses, I will try and disable/tweak some of the video settings to see if that helps,
the lag problem seems to happen sporadically and at times all is well,

I was thinking maybe the cpu or video card might be overheating but I dont have the case cover installed and I use a separate large fan blowing air into the case for additional cooling and ventilation, my other course of action would be to reinstall OFP and try to see if lag continues,

The only background program I have running in the Systray is McAfee Security center (comcast), other than that my system is pretty lean. I will also try to disable McAfee to see if it helps too.


Question 1-
Can anyone comment on whether the pbo files ("BRG_n2.pbo" and "wgl_i_t.pbo") found in the "Res/Addons" folder are official or unofficial addons and if they should stay. According to Mikero's list of the official addons:  http://andrew.nf/OFP/BedtimeReading/PristineAddons.htm, these two files were not identified.

Question 2-
After watching the game's intro cutscene, when I finally get to the mission briefing screen, there at the top of the briefing screen is an error message that reads:
'_northBox4 = nearestObject [object _northObj, "AmmoBoxAddW"]|#|': Error 0 elements provided, 3 expected
This message shows for about 5 seconds then goes away, is this message as expected and can be ignored, or could this message be related to the lag issue?



anyways thanks again and I hope to be able to get to finish Abandoned Armies,
OFP rocks!

[rhysduk]

Hey dan,

Q1: I, and am certain that other will agree, that  the two PBO files that you listed in your above post are definitely not OFFICIAL BIS addons, they are third party addons.

Q2: Are you running any mods like FFUR or ECP when playing the mission? I cant see why you should get this error due to lag as lag is caused by your PC not being able to cope with all the arguements and variables, units, situations etc passed to it at a time. You should not see an error "due to lag" only the fact that your PC runs slow. Double check that you are running the latest version of AbArmies and not an old version that may have included the said error/bug.

Rhys

[THobson]

Also check that you are using the standard island - no mods tweaks or improvements.  The error message you mention never came up during the months of beta testing but was reported recently by someone who was not using the standard island.

[karantan]

@dan brown

It seems "BRG_n2.pbo" is from the HergHoff's Nature Pack 2, and "wgl_i_t.pbo" is from the WGL Mod, so definitely they're not an official addons, and probably they're causing you those problems, as also TH is suspecting in his post above. But it could proove hard for those files to be removed, because they're usually part of something bigger (pack or mod).

But I can add I played this mission with Nature Pack 3 and with ECP without any problems. Misterious are the OFP's ways ...