@mikero
Great thank you.
Flags:When you say don't hold your hand - do you think I am doing that? Is there too much use of flags from your perspective? I have one at each base and one for the leader of each vehicle group. I can see why you suggest using them as the overview picture, the trouble is I really like my current one.
Bodies:Great suggestion, some voice over and maybe a savegame. The bodies only feature in Stamenov's part of the island. He is evil, Andropov is just ruthless.
A Fiction:I am really glad someone liked that. I had the idea when I realised I was basing the names in the mission on real people.
Leon Stamenov, from Leon Trotsky;
Vladimir Ilich Andropov from Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Andropov from the former head of the KGB
Other names I got by looking in telephone directories and selecting combinations that pleased me. In the end I don't think the extent to which the key players have names comes out very much.
Cutscenes:I agree. I have already spent more time at the keyboard on these than all the rest of the mission put together (and believe me that is saying something!), and the main factor driving the size of the download is the cumulative size of all the voice files, but it does need more. This was meant to be a tip the toe in the water exercise for me. This is my first ever attempt at cutscenes with voices but some leviathan got its tentacles around that toe and I am now in deep ocean.
Savegames:In v1.00 the player had an infinite number available. There was push back from beta testers about this, so I limited the number and then added a new one every 90 minutes or so.
Your logic is powerful. I will take out the 90 minute ‘reward', but add them elsewhere when the player has done something worthy of one. As you say it would improve player feedback which I agree does need boosting
Cheatsaves:I don't know if they can be prevented, the player can always <Alt><Tab> out and rename the savefile. That is what I do when I am testing, but I really do want to get the number of savegames sufficiently well balanced that it is not necessary. Vain hope maybe.
x4 crippler:My hero. If you read the early posts on v1.00 you will see that this was hotly debated. My instinct was always that to create the type of atmosphere I wanted accelerated time had to be prevented.
Godzilla:The Abrams are real bastards, but paradoxically they are some of the easiest armour to capture. A mine or satchel charge will kill anything else but with an Abrams a well placed mine or satchel charge together with a repair truck gives you your very own battle tank.
I have some concerns here that I need to think on. The mission is pretty well balanced as it is and so to start swapping M1A1s with T80s might have some other unfortunate consequences. Set against that is the effect the tank had on your enjoyment and also Student Pilot also stopped when he saw Andropov still had one active.
I have made a change between v1.00 and v1.10 that might be an influence here. In v1.00 all the armour on both sides was committed either to the north/south battle, or to defending their base when it is attacked. In v1.10 each side has one armour group that is only committed when that side enters its endgame (<50 living loons left or leader killed or Alexi detected in the base). This significantly increases the likelihood of the player having to deal with it. ‘It' being a T80 + Bradley with onboard infantry in the north and an Abrams + BMP with on board infantry in the south. Perhaps as a minimum I need to go back to the set up used in v1.00.
There is also a huge amount of variability. Sometimes the choppers rule the island blasting all the armour away, other time they are taken out so quickly there is a lot of armour left.
The simple act of writing this has helped me clear some thoughts. My current inclination is:
- Reinstate the arrangement in v1.00. That way there is a high probability that all the armour of each side will have contact with armour and possibly air units of the other side before the player needs to deal with them.
- Otherwise leave them in to reinforce the need to hit and then run away.
This is not a ‘decision' it is meant to be a suggestion for comment.
AV/AP:I think this was a good idea that might just not be good enough. In v1.00 these mines were a mess. You could place them at anytime, you did not need specific items of inventory {you could even place them when you were in a vehicle!) and there was no disarm option. Yet they were useful and fun.
In v1.10 all that has been fixed, but they are now worse than useless. I have just completed my run through of v1.10 (you will understand I don't do a full run through that often!). I placed two AV mines deliberately and several accidentally. Of the two I placed deliberately one destroyed three M2 jeeps and the other remained un-detonated at the end of the mission. I did not place a single AP mine.
Options I am thinking about, and on which I would welcome comment, are:
Option 1: Just get rid of them
Option 2: Put a safe option as the top action (I like Planck's suggestion of a hint giving the number left) and remove the need to have some specific items in inventory - this is what makes the AP mines useless and the AV mines so annoying when placed accidentally. But this change does reduce the realism significantly.
Option 3: At La Trinite instead of forcing them on the player, give the player the option to take them or not and also give him a radio command that lets him throw them away.
Option 4: Option 2 and Option 3 combined.
Vehicles:I understand what you want. The scripting challenge is immense, I would have to be monitoring and fixing problems with the OFP engine (I am already doing that a lot just to keep the convoys and jeep patrols running). That was difficult enough and I know what they are supposed to be doing. Monitoring units that may or may not be in a vehicle, and may or may not be trying to get somewhere is a task that is currently beyond my energy level.
Goisse:In v1.00 all the towns were empty once the fighting started and the soldiers there went off to war. In v1.10 Goisse is the one border town I forgot to put in some permanent guards. Sorry, now fixed for v1.11. I have no idea where the solitary soldier came from.
Westrons: The location of base camp is , well, at worst! perfect.
Thanks. In the earlier threads there was a lot of discussion about this also, mostly not supportive. Your comments help reinforce my view to go with my instinct.
What happens when I accidentally shoot my Russian? Do the rest of my squad/some of my squad desert?
It is just the same as accidentally shooting anyone in your squad in any standard OFP mission. Do it too often and you get shot. Killing one of the civis you rescue though is different - killing one is one too many. Also killing anyone at the mountain lodge before the cutscene is also fatal. Otherwise I have just gone with standard OFP.
civils enter the area, why cant one/ two of them, start replacing my dead medic if I 'learn' to go back to passagne. (repopulating means dead ai can be put in graves and buried from cpu cycles)
That is a tough challenge. I don't want just to have random people there, if I have them they will need to interact with the player. The closest I got was in v1.00 I had a couple of mad women running around the island. At the time I did not have the energy to make them interact with the player so took them out. I am certainly thinking of bringing them back. They seemed quite popular.
I do like your concept of the player learning things. That needs more thought on my part.
airport:There is no consequence to the player if he starts killing surrendered soldiers ( or escaping soldiers at Chapoi). This was one of those - I will do it later - tasks that I didn't get round to for v1.10.
Houdan:Dourdan is a border town and so must contain a significant presence. Houdan is the sort of place a deserter might go to.
On the counterbalance issue with the airport:
The Russian can't be alone. He's atoning for his sins, nursing badly wounded civilian, probably female. She can't speak till medic'd. She tells player the airport wobble, the thing to stop the Chapoi assault being a certainty. She joins the squad if numbers are 'right'. Civilian must be in crawl mode, transport needed. And, they can be safely left where they were found in mad rush for ambulance bmp at trinite (eg).
Is a stunning idea. Thanks.
Arudy Snipers:They are gone in v1.11. On the suggestion of having more infantry groups in the mountains - I too was wondering about that, not in the context of the Arudy snipers, but just generally. You make an excellent case that would improve the atmosphere of the mission. The mission certainly has the capacity. Would you believe that excluding the small groups that guard the towns, but including all the soldiers in each base and the soldiers that travel with each convoy I only use 18 infantry groups for each side? I laugh when I see people complaining that the OFP limit of 63 groups per side is too small!
The thing that stopped me doing this earlier was a concern about lag, but that seems not to be a serious problem.
There are somethings I need to give thought to:
- Are they to be a force early on or throughout the mission? In other words do they join the general north/south war (and so get neutralised) or do they stay put so requiring the player to deal with them.
- Their location - I don't want them getting in the way of the armoured groups that attack each others base.
Tough / Too hard:Yes
If the yes refers to Tough - fine; if it refers to Too Hard - then not fine.
My conservative estimate is you would had to have played 100+ missions before this one to have any chance of 'understanding' what tools to use. Mgun vs rpg vs Snipe vs use terrain, vs vehicles. Buildings are both friend and foe. What do black ops really mean. You need to know what chopper + truck + clear skies mean. You especially need to know the differences between rpg/law/gustav and AA. You would not introduce a friend to ofp via this black hole.
That is what I want. I started building this mission thinking there might be one or, if I was very lucky, three people in the whole world that would enjoy and finish this mission. I have been thrilled by how wrong I was.
But it is too tough. I met it at Larche, MacGuba at Arudy. All of us at airport / chapoi. The saving grace is that ai wont hunt you to extinction. When you 'learn' this, it's manageable.
I have tried very hard not to play the player, not to make assumptions about what he will or will not do and to make it easy or difficult for him. I have just tried to create a realistic island and then give the player an impossible task. I mean - you arrive on the island that has two large and well organised armies (each with a head count of 280+ in v1.10) all you have is a pistol and a couple of magazines and your objective is to ‘kill them all' or as near as damn it. It forces the player to learn new ways of playing.
It is still a huge regret of mine that I could not keep the size of the squad down to seven. Then I could have made oblique references to medieval Japanese samurai.
I do like your idea of multiple minefields - with real mines this time so the player can see them. Concerns I have about this are:
- They could seriously inhibit the north/south war
- They must not get in the way of the armoured assault each side makes on the other's base - and this then makes me feel like I am making a map that is deliberately contrived.
- It would not be realistic for armour to be oblivious to the location of their own minefield. The way the mission works the armour goes where it sees fit.
This is another idea I need to soak on.
mikero - you have really ‘done me proud' as they say where I come from. Huge ego boosts balanced with comments that bring me back to earth and some excellent ideas for the next version. I am truly grateful.
Topic: (Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies (Read 264054 times)
