My mission pipe dream

[BenMorton]

I've always wanted to make a mission that each time you played it would be different in some way to keep the mission fresh and interesting. I tried to make it myself awhile back but gave up due to lack of knowledge and patience. I'll give the jist of it though.

The map was Everon and you start off on the beach just south of the small town on the northeast tip of the island. Your opening objective is to rescue some soldiers who will make up the rest of your team for the rest of the mission. Then you get new orders that a scud missile carrying a biochemical agent will launch in a specific amount of time only you don't know which scud site its at but you know a man who does. You track this guy down, maybe have a little skirmish in the process and then find out where the scud is.

Now this is the part where the randomness comes into play, each time you play the mission a script will randomly select a location from a number of possible scud sites and since you have a limited amount of time you can't learn the location of all possible scud sites and then just attack them all.

Anyway that was my pipe dream. It may have already been made by someone else in the past but if it has I aint heard of it.

Ben.

[CameronMcDonald]

So, what's the question?

[gambla]

i`m new to mission making myself, but canÂ't this be simply solved by the "possibilty of presence" (?) of the units ? this shoud enable randomness of number + location of the scud-sites right ?
what do the experts say ?  

[ACF]

Disclaimer: not putting myself up as an expert . . .

If you want to have a go, I think the aim was to have 1 Scud  but with many possible locations.  The editor-supplied randomness won't do it - random placement could put it in the middle of a wood or on a church tower.

You could put key markers/objects out to chosen locations, choose one then setpos the Scud there, but my approach would be:

Place a named Scud in each location (you then have control over the layout)
Make an array of all the Scud names
Randomly select one Scud from the array
Subtract that name from the array
DeleteVehicle all the crews and Scuds in the array
Go and find it . . .

You could have a corresponding array of information that your informant passes on - a script selects and presents/speaks the right data for the chosen Scud.

There is an array tute that's worth a look . . .

[BenMorton]

So, what's the question?

Just wanted some opinions on my idea from other mission makers. Thats what this board is for isnt it?

The way I had intended on doing it was to make like say 5 different scud sites and name the scuds scud1, scud2 etc. Then a script would then have all these names in an array which would then randomly select one of these scuds and then it could mark on the map which one to attack.

I'm not very good at making scripts, most of my missions using scripts are ones I downloaded so I dont know if what I intended to do is possible.

[Artak]

Your idea is very doable and infact every good mission should have some randomness in it.
You can use random patrol patterns for enemy, createunit and createvehicle in a script to make the number of enemies change, random insertion point for player with a setpos script, random objectives with the setobjstatus "hidden" command, random radiocalls for support or whatever with the setradiomsg command, ... the list goes on and on.

I've had a dream of doing a really random MP mission for a long time now, where you can select a scene you play. Sadly random is handled differently in MP than it is in SP, which makes my dream a lot of work.. maybe some day if I find the time and energy.

Anyway, I think you should start building your dream mission and when you have a question about how to do what, post it in the editing board and someone's sure to help you out.  

[BenMorton]

Will try and get round to making it soon, just finishing up another mission at the moment which I'll be posting on beta testing board.
I've had a rush of missions recently, I seem to have months of dry spells when I cant think of a decent idea to save my life then all of a sudden I get like whole bunch of them

[Roni]

I'm in sort of "pre-planning" for a mission with random play.  That being said, I've been pre-planning it for the past three months or so !  

The mission sees you as one of three assassins called in to Everon for a major job.  Random civilians and police patrol the entire island (mostly by simpy having one group continuously teleport itself to the town nearest to your current position !), in addition there are a number of fixed people you have to link up with.

The first is a courier who meets you at the start.  He has an addaction, which when activated tells you where "Mr Big" is currently based.  Mr Big can be in any one of five spots, determined at game start by use of a random setPos command (ie - roll dice - if result is one then setPos to the game logic unit at St Pierre, if result is two then setPos to Le Moule etc).

Mr Big gives you $5,000 (publicVariable, amount can be displayed as a hint at any time as an addaction) and the location of TWO weapons merchants.  There are six in total - handguns, longarms, sniper weapons, missiles, explosives and goons (additional team members).

Each arms merchant has a random start position as well and each of them has two addactions to buy weapons (eg - AK47 or G36, Hunting Rifle or M21 etc) and one to find the location of two more arms merchants.

To get around the island you will be able to rent cars, motorcycles or trucks or take one of the buses which continually circle the island.

Once you have your weapons you then have to hunt your target (a leading political figure) by going from town to town, querying the locals (addaction again !) until you find out where he is.  After that, all you have to do is bypass the guards, waste the target, get back to Mr Big for your final payment and get off the island.

Of course, once the target is dead you are now setCaptive false so now every cop and soldier on the island will be gunning for you !

I know that all of the above is easily eachievable, it's just tedious to set up.  All of my missions use time dilation (ie skipTime) so that days pass in minutes - I like the "campaign" feel it gives.  It also makes mision planning important - do we attack now or wait until nightfall ?

If you're interested in helping me create and test the mission let me know and I'll send you a beta once I get off my rear and get it done.  A good kick in the back side usually gets me working !  

[BenMorton]

That sounds like a good mission and I'd love to give it a test run whenever you get a beta version ready.

[XCess]

Check out Abandoned Armies by ThobSon on the beta test forum.

[PrejudiceSucks]

Sounds like a top plan. On the other hand, it would be a bit stupid to have 'SetCaptive' when there is a man with large weapons and a team of thugs walking around. Maybe you could set it so that you would have to keep your weapons in a car or something, and if you had a weapon out, the police would start shooting.

Whilst this may seem stupid, it happens all of the time, for example, the Irishman shot by a police sniper for carrying a weapon (Although it actually later turned out to be a table leg, and not a sawn-off)

[Roni]

Among my many half baked mission ideas is another one using the same setCaptive concept but based in Iraq.  At the moment the mission has almost nothing in it - just a half a dozen civvie groups on a random walk, a single US soldier, a single unarmed terrorist skinned to look like a civilian and an ammo crate filled with grenades.   ;D

To give the US player a chance I used setMimic and setFaceAnimation so that the terrorist never smiles and never blinks !  Now all the US guy has to do is look stand in front of various civvies and look in to their eyes, while keeping a watch over the ammo crate for suspicous crouching dudes.  Now you know why bad guys wear sunglasses !

I played this last Friday as the terrorist and managed to avoid the GI and pick up four grenades.  I kept chucking shots at the GI every time he turned his back but kept missing - thankfully he never picked me up.  Finally, he sussed me out and walked up to interrogate me.  I crouched, pulled the pin on my last grenade, he shot and we both went up at the same time.

Allahu Akbar !

The fun was that he ran past me at least 3-4 times - it's really fun trying to pretend to be an AI unit !  Try it sometime - slow steady walk, bump in to someone and stop, every once in a while go prone etc.  Just follow the guys arond you, but don't delay too long - that's a dead giveaway !

Once I get all my other projects off my plate I have heaps of ideas for extending the mission.  I'm going to give the US player lots more weapons, body armour (via a script I found in the editors depot) and group respawn (ie - player respawns to group, group automatically replenishes its losses every sixty seconds or so).

The Resistance player will get Imams to create new group members (recruiting at the mosque), Hilalis to provide the money to buy weapons and of course arms merchants and bomb labs to supply them to you.

To get around the "walking around town with AK47 showing" problem I'm working on a script called by radio that will hide or expose all any longarm via removeWeapon and a public variable (to keep track of who has what), along with a setCaptve command so that the AI won't shoot dudes with concealed weapons.  Note that I can't use an addAction for this otherwise the US player will pick up the bad guy just by standing next to him !

I'm also going to give the US an addaction to interrogate the nearest civvie.  All this will do is return the target's Side via a sideChat and expose any weapons he may be carrying.  Then it will be either arrest or kill (depending on what the terrorist player decides to tell his jihadi to do.

When it's finished it should be sweet, but DEFINITELY an MP mission.

Once again, I'll post it when I've go something presentable.    


roni