(Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies

[Mikero]

@Thob

You're probably too deep into the next release to do this, but is it possibly to supply a patched version to get round the everyone report of the problem with the 1st load of civvies? Most of us wont load it but newcomers will get relief.

Serious question:

can I have some ambient sounds please

flies around dead civilian bodies

the sound of a generator in a town any town that never got switched off? Could this be an invisible vehicle eg with it's motor on?

Radios in houses producing nothing but static?

[Mikero]

@TestALot

it would be dramatically helpful to many mission designers if you were able to spend a little time with your addons by iteravely playing this mission up to (say) the end of Vigny and reporting the bugz introduced individually by php , y2k3 and the flashFX addon.

Even if it were just a statement that Russian snipers turn green yellow would be a future reference mark for all of us. That way, when testers like you and I encounter this in other missions, we can report why.

[THobson]

StG:

You have got another savegame

In the version you have this happens at approximately 90 minute intervals.  This has been changed for the next version.  In the next version you start with 36 savegames and then some more are added as objectives are completed.

exactly how many helicopters are in the mission?
Because the man in Houdan said "each side has one", so , well , i shot one down, i think i heard the other go down, and now theres another one audible ? Maybe i didn't hear it go down and something else exploded.

 Actually he says
"each side has one helicopter patrolling all the time"
That comment only applies before the war starts and he doesn't say anything about how many each side has in total.  In fact each side has one Hind and one Cobra.

Vehicles sinking underground.  There have been other beta testers that have shown me the lodge buildings up in the air!  I suspect that if you go to Options Video settings your will see your ‘Terrain detail' setting is not set to Normal - in fact I would guess it is set to Low but I might be wrong.  It is becoming clear that OFP really does need to be played with terrain detail set to normal.  The problems of not doing this are not apparent on most missions because they are relatively short.  This one is a long one and so there is more time for the problems to develop.  The readme file for the next version makes the need to have terrain detail set to normal clear.  How are the buildings at the lodge?
BTW what's with the surrendering soldier?  How did he get there?  It looks like Sergei.  The position he is in is only used by Sergei in the cutscene at Houdan - no one else is given that move anywhere in the mission.

Missing objectives from the briefing after loading a SAVE game.  I have not seen this happen this way - I have seen the objectives disappear when I linked back to that page from other pages in the briefing.  Clicking on the Plan tab usually fixes that.  I took out all my links back to that page because of this, I really don't know what I can do about he problem you have identified.


Mikero:
Patched version that fixes the first group of civis:  Good idea.  It has been along time since there were new beta testers so it seemed not to matter. (EDIT:  Now done.  The overview will indicate this as v1.10b)

can I have some ambient sounds please

flies around dead civilian bodies

the sound of a generator in a town any town that never got switched off? Could this be an invisible vehicle eg with it's motor on?

Radios in houses producing nothing but static?

Ambient sounds are on the list, but in my early experimentation with them I was disappointed by how they are implemented in OFP.  The next version does have some but more would be good.
-flies - I have not thought about how to do this and honestly I may not get round to it.
-generator - that would be good to have in each of the bases.  I can't make a vehicle invisible but I will experiment with one inside a building or underground.
-radios with static - not difficult, just consumption of more CPU cycles.

[XCess]

Sergei's climbing in the sunken truck, not surrendering.

BTW... still awaiting my replacement, they send "end of next week" that was last saturday i think but i have the foggiest memory of all time. Soon i hope!

[macguba]

can I have some ambient sounds please

Yes!   That's partly where the mad max thing comes from.   It's too quiet.   (I don't mean "It's quiet.  Too quiet."   I just mean "It's too quiet.")

ECP does the flies so either don't bother or nick their script and give credit.    Generators and so on are much better, consistent with the civvies at the windows and that sort of thing.

Ambient sounds will lend them selves very much to the Sui school of editing, which makes the mission different every time.    Create a dozen or more ambient sounds.    Use a very slow looping script to check the player's position (and the state of relevant variables) and make the sound happen.   This is a legitimate use of camCreate or whatever, as long as it is done correctly.

[THobson]

Sergei's climbing in the sunken truck, not surrendering

That's a relief.  I feared he had spent the whole mission walking round like that.

I don't mean "It's quiet.  Too quiet."  I just mean "It's too quiet."

;D

Ambient sounds:
This is certainly on the list.  I would have done more already but my first attempts were stymied a bit.  The game comes with a lot of animal and other sounds and it is not difficult to put them in a mission, but the sound objects and the environment sounds linked to triggers are very clever, they select a range of sound files and play them in random order, forever.  The problems are: the sound objects cannot be moved or turned on and off, and triggers are, well triggers.  The condition checking that I won't need all adds to the CPU load.    Anyway finding there was no instant solution I moved on to other things while I thought about it a bit.

A bit of care is needed so it doesn't look contrived. For example: static from a radio - easy.  But the radio can't be on the floor, it should look realistic and so be on a table of of some sort, but you can't just have a house with a table and a radio, so more furniture is needed.  Then why only that house? and before you know where I am I have furnished a whole town.  Then why just that town? - All for one radio and a bit of static.

[Mikero]

Then why just that town? - All for one radio and a bit of static.

you got the idea Thob, well done. Have a biscuit.

Anytime I can make your life a misery, please feel free to call.

[macguba]

 ;D  

These should be mystery sounds.   You go and look for the radio, you can't find it.   You stop to listen and you can't hear it any more either.

People are used to this to some extent.  Before discovering the mission editor I once spent a LOT of time trying to find that wretched dog.

[Goettschwan]

@Thobson, my graphics details are set to high, i can provide more details if you want.
The photo makes those settings look awful because of the 50k limit.
Sorry for not explaining the photos, it is me who finds the two cars underground, the driver sergei who gets in the truck and then finds himself driver of the underground truck.
What does OFP do wrong when you set the graphics to not normal ?
(just for reference, i might start building missions, too )

I am glad you augmented the number of savegames, i am a bit short and i think a have a lot more to go.  
The buildings at the lodge are okay in position but as i stated some time ago i can walk inside the concrete of the lodge, and when i get prone there i can look under the house.
I thought this is caused by the sancanim pack and so i wanted to check again without.

It would be nice to have sound with the existing decorative elements at least, dropping water somewhere in some inaccessible house, a sound like air sorting somewhere for the fuel stations, dogs or cats wouldn't be bad, too.
Something i never heard in ofp is the wood cracking you have inside forests, that would be nice, too.

Thanks for your work, Thobson!
StG

[THobson]

I should know by now that nothing is quick with OFP.  I though I would stop what Iwas doing and quickly knock up some generators.  I found the sound file I wanted, wrote a script that would place a GL in a chosen building and say the sound in a continuous loop.  Easy

Well it seems that with the say command if the player is only a few meters away it switches off the sound, so the sound is either off or on quite loud, and because of all the other things going on in the mission there is often a pause in the sound.  None are insurmountable (I expect), just not as simple as I first thought.

StG:
There are others that know better than I what is going wrong when OFP is not set to normal terrain detail.   It is something to do with how many polygons it uses to create the terrain and how it connects them.  This problem was discovering v1.00 and I thought I had solved it in v1.10.  In this version the terrain detail is set at the start and reset every 5 minutes.  I now think this might be making things worse, creating a cumulative build up of the effects as players load saved missions and then save them again.

I checked the house some time ago but not recently.  I will have another look at it soon.

never heard in ofp is the wood cracking you have inside forests, that would be nice, too.

In deed it would,  BIS could do it easily - they already have different sounds for the left and right foot on different surfaces.  Dripping water is also a very cool idea.

just for reference, i might start building missions, too

I encourage you to do just that.  It is the best fun you can have with your clothes on.

[XCess]

Lol. goin over the top a bit i think.

[Goettschwan]

Hi all,
I have changed my video settings from high to normal. I don't think this made an immediate effect, but well. So your mission continually sets them but the setting in the pause screen remain as they did ?
So it is set by the mission,too, that i can see only that far? Because i have doubled my visible area from 800 to 1600, but i do not see more even without the constant fog. Problem is, i am being really limited in my movements at the moment because the enemies attack from beyond my visible range, e.g. somewhere out of the fog (its foggy and raining at the moment). On the other hand this is maybe designed not to be cake,
so its maybe okay.
Btw. the tank was not such a good idea because the mission designer made sure there are enough RPGs running around to save his face  ;D , no seriously, i have played some missions where the mission designers never thought of the possibility that you could steal a tank somewhere they didn't place as empty. So here it is well done.

Back to the sound; at the moment your empty cities feel a bit like old ruins, long ago left.  This is maybe planned that way, but if we look at it as "recently emptied" it sure needs a bit more audio. On the other hand, the immersion factor will go through the roof.  

StG

[THobson]

StG:

Your comments are superb.  Thank you.  Clearly more sounds are needed.  At the moment I am busy with making the additional cutscenes  that the next version will have, but I have already noticed that the stuff I have added has really slowed the mission down (sorry Planck).  Sounds must be the next thing - but I fear will have to lose some of the other stuff to keep it playable.  It would be a pity to lose the flag changing - but that is taking up 16 triggers and 16 names.  A bit expensive for what you get.

My experience is that tanks are terrifying when you are on the outside, and terrifying when you are on the inside.

So your mission continually sets them but the setting in the pause screen remain as they did

Yes that surprised me when I first saw it.  I think that is part of the problem that results in a cummulative effect.

How are you doing in the mission bye the way - apart from realising tanks are not an easy solution?

[Goettschwan]

Well, i have played the mission solo so far, leaving my team on hide at the lodge,
i completed the three civilians, northron and southron convoy are no more, southron guard group is no more, cleared the garrison in dourdan and the two cities northeast of the lodge. Shot down a cobra helicopter. Am in possession of a repair truck, an ammo truck, a bmp ambulance, a truck and a t80 plus the vehicles at the lodge. I have so many weapons i will never use all Have not yet laid one of your mines, the mine stock at la trinite was quite large.  Have used all but two savegames. (Will expedition somewhere really lonely and let the computer run for half a day, that should solve that problem ;D

I want to move north to the airport but am a bit stuck because there are investigating platoons coming from roughly north to my position which is east of the lodge. Have to try other tactics to solve that problem. I am shure that if i had a squad of four humans the map would be no more, but then again i have that feeling quite often.    

Just to know, roughly how many triggers are in use now ?
Is it possible to script a loop which tests the position of the player (or anybody) every half minute or so and replace a trigger with it ? One could use that then to activate environment sounds, because it would use less CPU then a trigger.

Thanks, StG

[Acecombat]

I liked what i read in the first page of this thread so i decided to give this mission a go (funny how after 24 pages the beta testing is still actively going on   ) , anyway i d/lded it started it.

Got the intro , nicely done , read the briefing and clicked START and then *BOOM* CTD i got thrown out of OFP for no reason?

I am running the latest version of ECP btw could that be the cause or what?