Capture & Hold Mission Template (ACCEPTED)

[Strango]

Do you like the Capture and Hold Gameplay, but don't like the arcade / BF2 style of other C&H mission types for ArmA?

Here's a brand new template that caters to the crowd looking a more realistic pace and flow. This template allows new missions to be made as simple as possible with lots of room for variety and configuration by the creator.

Features:

   * Wave Based Respawn - When players die they will respawn to an isolated area outside of the AO where they must await the respawn wave countdown. At this time all dead players will be respawned. The advantage to this is that you respawn with your teammates and are able to leave based as a group and with proper teamwork will have a greater impact upon re-entering the objective areas.

   * Selectable Number of Objectives - The number of objectives to be fought over is selectable by the server admin while at the lobby screen. This is helpful to make your mission scalable based on the number of players on the server. Only have a handful of guys? Select 1 Flag. If the server is full select 3 Flags.

   * Persistent Presence Based Capture System - Unlike other C&H mission types in order to maintain control over an objective area you must have a majority control of the that objective area. If your team leaves the objective area you will lose control of that objective. This keeps down the "Whack-A-Mole" style of play you see in other C&H's where everyone assaults and no one defends and while you are taking the objective they just took they are taking the objective you last took. You end up with less fighting and more running around. Due to the lower number of objectives (Maximum of 3) and a severe incentive to defend an objective fire fights will be more common and of greater intensity.

   * Forced Weapon Loadouts Based on Player Class - Tired of having every player choose any type of kit they wish with versatile load-outs to make them 1-Man armies? The template works best when no ammo crates are placed in the mission. Upon respawn a player will be given a custom weapon load-out selected by the mission creator based on the Type of slot they picked on the lobby screen. By default some slots are assistant based and will carry extra ammo for specialty slots like Anti-Armor soldiers and Machine-gunners.

   * Custom Vehicle Respawn System - A new vehicle respawn system has been created from scratch to allow the mission maker to customize to a greater extent how they want the respawn behavior of vehicles to work. They control the ability to declare respawn length, maximum number of respawns allowed (with infinite as an option) and an Abandonment toggle to have certain vehicles respawn if they are abandon (off by default).

   * Various realism based toggles - The template allows a variety of realism based features to be turned on or off by changing a single variable. Some of these features are allowing only Pilot slots to fly aircraft, turning off parachutes and forcing transport helicopters to land for disembarking troops, Allowing only pilot slots to move Repair/Fuel/Ammo trucks to keep less desirable players from using them as transportation into the AO and various other features.

   * Support for 3 teams - The template is capable of handling BLUFOR, OPFOR and Independent in the same mission allowing for 3-way battles.  If you design a mission with 3 teams it is still capable of being played with any two teams.


The attached download contains two versions of the template. One version is for missions on Sara and the other on Sara-Lite. Be sure to go through the readme file in the zip for assistance on setting up the mission the way you want.

Please report any bugs you find.  I'll be sure to include a version number of the zip files to make it easy to distinguish which version you have.


Here is a sample mission made with the Template that has all 3 teams battling for control of Ortego.  It contains an asymmetric design with each team having different advantages & disadvantages.
ftp://the-citadel.us/arma/missions/c&h_51_ortego_3_way_v0.75.saraLite.pbo

Link Updated with version 0.75
Changes from 0.74 to 0.75
- Organized C&H system scripts into a sub-folder to keep them separate from other mission scripts the user might use.  
- Added default units for the resistance side to both templates to save time for mission creators.
- Set units to playable by default in the SaraLite template to save time for mission creators.
- Updated the Loadouts.sqf with more player classes to keep users from having to add them if they wish to use those classes.
- Updated Credits to include references for Tactician and Mandoble

OFPEC DOWNLOAD

[hoz]

I have move this topic because this seems more like a resource then a mission. If you wish to have it reviewed as mission then resubmit it packaged as a mission, rather then a template.

THanks
Hoz

[Spooner]

The template links are good, but the link to the example mission is broken. Note that you can just attach the files to your release post, which is easier for most people (and a free extra mirror for you ;P).

Sounds perfect for my style of play, having come to ArmA from BF2: Project Reality mod (ArmA really is lacking an even half-decent player-vs-player game-mode).

Some initial comments (without playing the demo mission):
* Please put all your C&H files in a subdirectory, so that they don't get mixed up with the mission-maker's other files.
* Rather than force the mission-maker to use your init.sqs (a lot of people use init.sqf anyway, which would require them to re-write your script to SQF to include it in their init file), make them just run your strango_c_and_h\init.sqs (just an example directory name ;P) from within their init.sqs/init.sqf file. This will also make it easier to update your scripts without forcing the mission-maker to edit their own init file.
* Please give WGL/Tactician proper credit since you state in file comments that you base your template on their work.
* Please give Mandoble proper credit, since you incorporate his Mando_no_radar script.

EDIT: (I fixed the demo mission link for you; you'd copy-and-pasted the text of the link at BIS forums, not the link URL itself).

[Strango]

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll incorporate those changes in the next release.

The reason I left init as sqs instead of sqf like the rest of the script files was because I wanted to keep it easier for the novice users to be able to use the template.  They may not have the debugging knowledge to figure out any syntax errors they may have made.  I'll be sure to put the C&H init in the new directory though and have the users call it from the mission init file.

EDIT:
I updated the first post with version 0.75 of the template.

For those of you who have started missions already do not worry as there are not any bug fixes or new features in the release so no need to update your WIP missions.

The changes deal with accessibility and organizational improvements.  Detailed change-list provided in first post.

[ViperMaul]

Neat little C&H script example you got here.
Very good!!
If there is a AI wave example that would be much appreciated as well.

[Mandoble]

Should we consider this ready for submission?

[Strango]

I've only received Spooner's comments for feedback.  The BIS thread has not produced any bug reports.  In my testing it has been bug free and fully functional, but I'm not sure how many other people have tested it.

ViperMaul,
The wave script could be modified to work for AI, but it would require extensive modifications and would need to be a new stand-alone script with this system as a base.

[Mandoble]

Well, when you are satisfied with it switch it to (READY) and it will be tested or re-tested by us. This doesnt mean that this will be immediately accepted, but at least this (READY) state means that from your point of view it is mature and error free enough.

[Strango]

I've set it to Ready.