Evil's Last Will (Arma 3) Under Review

[Undeceived]

Evil's Last Will
(Arma 3)

Version: 1.4 (updated March 20th, 2023)
Author: Undeceived
Gametype: SP


Description:
Eliminate a target person and witness how murder and hatred only stoke more fear and death in this land - when evil fulfills its last will.


Trailer:



Features:

• Story-driven one-mission-mini-campaign with many objectives, ported from Arma 1 (OFPEC score back in the days: 8 out of 10)
• Modernized and optimized with Arma 3 features
• Full voice acting (German)
• English and German subtitles
• Thrilling and dark story, set in the deep forests of northern Sahrani
• Play as a Germany / NATO special forces operator: Infiltrate enemy positions, take out a highly valuable target, try to help local resistance forces, adapt to harsh circumstances due to missing allied support
• Cutscenes
• Custom music
• Custom main menu design
• Choose your equipment in the Arsenal, not in the briefing

Version history:
v. 1.4:
Fixed the main menu cutscenes (Arma 3 Invaders minigame deactivated).

v. 1.3:
Bugs eliminated (including a showstopper - the evacuation chopper wouldn't come)
Added task types (icons)

v. 1.2:
Bugs eliminated
Optimizations

v. 1.1:
Countless bugs eliminated
More optimizations and stuff added
Finished the mission package

v. 1.0 (beta):
Mission ported from Arma 1 to Arma 3
Fixed tons of bugs
Optimized tons of scripts and features
First release


Required mods:
CUP (Vehicles, Units, Weapons, Maps, Core)
CBA (required by CUP)


Download:
Evil's Last Will (A3) + required mods @ Steam Workshop


Thanks to these beta testers:
savedbygrace, Cheetah, Wolfrug, Zipper5, bert, mathias_eichinger, johnnyboy, Tyger, Sponbo, NightJay0044, schuler, Trapper, Manzilla, h-

[johnnyboy]

Hi Undeceived.  I forgot how awesome this mission is.  Music, cinematics, suspense, excellent voice acting.  But I'll save all the rave reviews for when you publish it (to help generate some buzz ).

So far, I've only got as far as sniping the officer, and halfway to back to exfil.  All worked perfectly, no bugs.  Great balance.   Found enemy camp 1/2 way to sniper position and decided to take it down.  3 campers is perfect challenge for solo sniper.   Foolishly tried to take on enemy sniper position, and failed.  So avoided it on next try.

Here's 2 grammar fixes for your briefing:

0. change "welcome on" to "welcome aboard"
1.  change "surprising attacks" to "surprise attacks"

The camp 1/2 way to sniper position has a little min-bunker with an ammo crate in it, but the ammo crate is not accessible.  Not really an issue, but players will try to interact with it, and not be able to.

Questions: 

1. Did you have to recreate all your cutscene camera work?  Or did the ported custcene scripts miraculously just work?
2. Did you convert all your .sqs to .sqf?

[Undeceived]

Thanks, johnnyboy!

I corrected the grammar issues. Keep them coming!


1. I don't remember anymore but I had a lot of work with the cutscenes. But this also has to do with my noob scripting (after all it was my very first mission).

2. I converted some important scripts to sqf, yes. Looking at it as a whole today the scripts are one total MESS. Absolutely chaotic and noobish, even I can't believe what I did there. Sometimes I created 3 scripts where only one would be ok.


But you know what? It works. As I said - I converted some things, but the rest is a good example of a somewhat working chaos.

Looking forward to the rest of your test. Thanks.

[h-]

What, something like 20Gb of addons for one mission 

...

It never crossed yer mind to re-make this with the vanilla content for example.. 
Well, will be testing this after downloading CUPs for a day or so



Oh, and yay, we got some posts on this old forgotten useless forum. 

[Undeceived]

Hi h-,

To be honest, no, I never thought about making it vanilla. You will see why - everything in this mission is about Sahrani, voice acting, briefings, etc. I waited years for this chance (recreation of the old Arma assets in Arma 3 in one big package, CUP), as unfortunately back then, when I finished ELW, Arma 2 came out, and the players (me included) were gone.

I recommend the CUP downloads at Steam workshop, as this is the easiest way to get the mod. CBA is on the workshop too, so it should be a piece of cake (at least for the end user, maybe not for the internet connection ).

And yeah, I'm glad to have some feedback here in this legendary forum. I made some advertising, PMing some of the old beta testers of ELW at the BIF (among some other guys) and mathias_eichinger said well, that meanwhileOFPEC has become a good place for some private beta testing. 😃
And I also resisted the temptation to release the mission at the "public places" such as BIF or Armaholic at the same time. I want to be sure that it's somewhat stable first. That gives me back that special feeling of the glorious OFPEC times.

See ya!

[savedbygrace]

I have began the downloads. Unfortunately, I haven't played Arma 3 in probably a year, maybe? I'll have to become familiar with the game again but I'll give some extensive feedback for sure. I won't do it for just anyone anymore because mission makers just don't care like they use to. I'm eager to see if the new title messes with the immersion at all and if CUP ported all terrain properly. I recall this mission well since I had played it so many times. I think one of the biggest hangups was AI interaction with the steeper terrain. I think there were also a few questionable camera choices and that darn dual rifle script. I tried using one of those in my OFP mission but it kept messing up. I don't think that's going to be a problem in this one. I think, if I remember correctly, Arma 3 forces a penalty for weight carry and I am hoping that it doesn't hinder the long distance foot travel.

[Undeceived]

Good to hear from you!

I think that the AI mountain issues still are there but I didn't test it extensively. At least they cross the mountains where they did in Arma 1 too - if it became better I don't know.
Other than that cars leave the road sometimes, but they reach their targets.

There's a weight penalty, yes, but (contrary to older versions) at the moment the biggest restriction is normal jogging pace (thanks God! ).

No dual rifle script this time but a big backpack where the player can put another weapon in. But at the moment the player starts with his main weapon of choice only (+ pistol) --> please let me know what you think about that. I could script a secondary rifle or machine pistol into the backpack but so far I didn't have the feeling it would be needed.

[h-]

To be honest, no, I never thought about making it vanilla.

I was only being about 0.25 serious

Played this thing through just now and as I have no talent in writing any sort of review I just list things
- Very well made, I am a fan of sniper missions of this sort
- Didn't come across any game breaking bugs (not really any bugs I guess).
- Many nice ideas like dropping weapons and whatnot (don't wanna spoil anything)
- Good voice acting although it escapes me why everyone on Sahrani was German now (although in original A1 everyone spoke English, so....). This might have been explained in the massive briefing but probably just went unnoticed by me.
- Had no AI trouble with mountains.

Since I always like to focus on the negative  , here goes some of that too:
- A bit melodramatic for my tastes.
- I generally dislike cutscenes (mainly because they tend to me painful to watch on the technical side), this has plenty, so..
- Regarding cutscenes, there were several a bit weird 'blinks' (fade to/from black) before some conversations took place, like there was about to be a cutscene but then it wasn't.
[spoiler]- At the Black Venom camp you apparently trip some sort of tripwire no matter what (judging from the sound) but the venoms don't react to it at all?[/spoiler]

at the moment the player starts with his main weapon of choice only (+ pistol)

I think this is fine, You can later on pick some AK from fallen enemy anyway.

Would be nice though if BIS finally made it possible to carry two primary weapons (at least for the sniper class).

[Undeceived]

Thank, h-!

- A bit melodramatic for my tastes.
- I generally dislike cutscenes

Haha, depending on the weight of these reservations you might be disappointed with my other / past / upcoming projects. There is plenty of it in them - cutscenes definitely, melodrama maybe (as it's a bit subjective).

But anyway thanks for the good feedback. I'll have an eye on these fade ins/outs and see if I can avoid them.

And... That tripwire sound was never meant to be a tripwire but an animal which is scared and runs away in the bushes. But you're not the first one who thinks like that. Maybe I should look for another sound....

[h-]

depending on the weight of these reservations you might be disappointed with my other / past / upcoming projects.

I don't mind drama but, and this is just my opinion of course and nothing more, it could be a bit more subtle at least on the player's part because what I personally dislike in games in general is forcing the player to feel something.

Cutscenes are fine but I'd hope people who make a lot of them would actually at least try to familiarize themselves with image composition rules, framing shots etc, and natural camera movement.
And please please never ever use the infuriating "setCameraTarget-somesoldier-bouncy-cam" awfulness.... 

That tripwire sound was never meant to be a tripwire but an animal which is scared and runs away in the bushes.

In that case use pig screaming or something because that would scare the hell out of people..
I guess I'm not the only expecting the venoms to protect their camp with traps hence the thought of a tripwire being tripped 

[Undeceived]

what I personally dislike in games in general is forcing the player to feel something

That's a good point which I will definitely keep in mind.

I guess I'm not the only expecting the venoms to protect their camp with traps hence the thought of a tripwire being tripped

You're so right... Damn - I think I will have to tweak that part resp. really make it a trip wire... Right now the player can't miss the trigger which was supposed to be the fleeing animal - I think I'll put triggers only at certain spots in the forest where the tripwires are set by the spetnaz (e.g. at the most obvious approach routes) and then send a patrol to check it out after it is tripped.

[h-]

You could also maybe even make the tripwire triggers shoot up a flare, to simulate a flare trap.
Would give the player a proper "damn, we're made" moment.. 

Mines could also be used but could be a bit frustrating for the player?

One thing, and again a pet peeve of mine , that you could tweak also is:
Soldiers standing in default wedge formation next to a camp fire doesn't really look like soldiers camping, would look better if they were sitting and such. There's a nice function BIS_fnc_ambientAnimCombat that does this and allows even a condition to be passed that frees the AI from the anim accordingly (if you're using the 3D editor and Eden Enhanced mod it adds this function functionality into the unit attributes).

Same goes for having sand-bag fortified positions in a forest which is a bit odd, but that's just my stupid perfectionism talking 

[Undeceived]

Damn, are they just standing around?? Oops Thanks for the hint, I forgot to optimize that.

Some nice ideas for that part, expect the one or the other in the next version.

[mathias_eichinger]

Wow, what a mammoth of a mission. Let's see if I can compile one of my detailed  beta tests like back in the old days. 

Overview and loading screen

Great choice of images, sparse overview text, but piques my curiosity.

Briefing

Very detailed, original military style affair, tells me everything I need to know, and it also features pictures.

Cinematics

Some weird camera angles, but these are probably leftovers from ArmA1 scripting, e.g. back then you might not have had the whole knowledge. Voice overs are great, especially since they are German.

Mission

Great weapon selection, how did you manage to implement the Armory into your mission?

Insertion went without a problem. I could avoid any patrols, but felt some urgency, as I could hear some distant shots, maybe the enemy would already gun down civilians.
Just before I took the shot that killed that villain, memories of Arma1 came back, as my character mused if he should pull the trigger or not.

But I waited and then the mission became much longer. I travelled to a village to discover that dropping my stuff too slow is rather unhealthy (great idea to implement this), RV'ed with my comrade, cleared a village, a forest SF camp, ambushed a convoy, had a hot exfil towards Hunapu (those pesky paratroopers killed most of my squad), and finally I was picked up by helo.

Yes, this mission IS melodramatic, to the point that the only thing missing is the line Tell *cough* my wife *cough* that I love her..... 
But that is your style, and when it is a wee bit toned down (like in Black Lands Campaign), it is an excellent feature.

There are only 2 potential bugs:
1) After the civilian goes his own ways just before Hunapu my #2 gets stuck in the forest, and only ever moves when ordered to board the evac helo.
2) The voiceover gives ArmA1 coordinates, the on-screen text gives the ArmA3 ones (really a minor thing).

Summary

A mission that feels realistic (I don't think real SF soldiers get a helo lift for just a few kilometers between their objectives) yet sports a kind of made-for-TV-movie-drama at the same time. Unique and likeable mixture.

[Undeceived]

Danke, mathias - much appreciated!


I implemented the arsenal this way (cudos to Larrow at the BIF!):

Code: [Select]

//Preload arsenal lists
[ "Preload" ] call BIS_fnc_arsenal;

//Add all your stuff to the PLAYER ( all it does is sets some variables on an object, that object then acts as arsenal whitelist )
//[ whitelist object, STUFF, isglobal, add action ]

//Weapons
[ player, [
"CUP_arifle_MG36",
"CUP_launch_M136",
"CUP_srifle_DMR_LeupoldMk4",
"CUP_lmg_L110A1_Aim_Laser",
"CUP_srifle_AWM_wdl_SBPMII",
"CUP_srifle_M40A3",
"CUP_srifle_Mk12SPR",
"CUP_srifle_M107_LeupoldVX3",
"CUP_srifle_M24_wdl",
"CUP_hgun_MicroUzi",
"hgun_Pistol_heavy_01_F",
"CUP_hgun_Glock17",
"CUP_hgun_Colt1911"

], false, false ] call BIS_fnc_addVirtualWeaponCargo;

//Magazines
[ player, [
"CUP_100Rnd_556x45_BetaCMag",
"CUP_M136_M",
"CUP_20Rnd_762x51_DMR",
"CUP_200Rnd_TE4_Yellow_Tracer_556x45_M249",
"CUP_20Rnd_556x45_Stanag",
"CUP_5Rnd_86x70_L115A1",
"CUP_5Rnd_762x51_M24",
"CUP_HandGrenade_L109A1_HE",
"CUP_HandGrenade_M67",
"CUP_PipeBomb_M",
"CUP_30Rnd_9x19_UZI",
"CUP_17Rnd_9x19_glock17",
"11Rnd_45ACP_Mag",
"CUP_7Rnd_45ACP_1911",
"CUP_10Rnd_127x99_m107"
], false, false ] call BIS_fnc_addVirtualMagazineCargo;

[ player, [

//Optics:
"CUP_optic_LeupoldMk4",
"CUP_optic_SB_3_12x50_PMII",
"CUP_optic_Leupold_VX3",
"CUP_optic_CompM2_Woodland2",
"CUP_optic_ACOG",
"optic_AMS_khk",
"optic_MRD",

//Silencers
"CUP_muzzle_snds_G36_desert",
"CUP_muzzle_snds_M110",
"CUP_muzzle_snds_AWM",
"CUP_muzzle_snds_M16_camo",
"CUP_muzzle_snds_M16",
"CUP_muzzle_snds_MicroUzi",
"muzzle_snds_acp",
"muzzle_snds_L",
"CUP_acc_ANPEQ_2",

//Headgear:
"H_Bandanna_khk_hs",
"H_Watchcap_blk",
"H_Watchcap_khk",
"H_HelmetB_camo",
"CUP_H_Ger_Boonie_Flecktarn",
"H_Booniehat_khk_hs",
"CUP_H_FR_Cap_Headset_Green",
"H_Shemag_olive_hs",
"H_ShemagOpen_tan",

//Uniforms:
"U_B_GhillieSuit",
"CUP_U_B_GER_Flecktarn_1",
"U_BG_Guerrilla_6_1",
"CUP_U_B_USMC_MARPAT_WDL_TwoKneepads",
"CUP_U_B_FR_Corpsman",
"CUP_U_B_FR_Light",
"CUP_U_B_FR_Scout2",
"CUP_U_B_FR_Scout3",
"CUP_U_B_FR_Scout",

//Goggles:
"G_Balaclava_blk",
"G_Balaclava_oli",
"G_Balaclava_lowprofile",
"G_Bandanna_blk",
"G_Bandanna_oli",
"CUP_FR_NeckScarf",
"CUP_FR_NeckScarf2",
"G_Combat",

//Stuff:
"NVGoggles_OPFOR",
"NVGoggles_INDEP",
"Rangefinder",
"FirstAidKit",
"ItemMap",
"ItemGPS",
"ItemRadio",
"ItemWatch",
"ItemCompass",
"CUP_B_GER_Pack_Flecktarn",
"B_Carryall_cbr",
"B_Carryall_khk",
"bipod_01_F_blk"
], false, false ] call BIS_fnc_addVirtualItemCargo;

sleep 0.1;

//Pop open the arsenal display - [ full version, object that holds whitelist, object to alter ( user of arsenal ) ]
["Open",[false,player, player]] call bis_fnc_arsenal;

sleep 1;

//Wait until Arsenal is closed by player:
waitUntil { isnull ( uinamespace getvariable "RSCDisplayArsenal" ) };

On the potential bugs:

1) After the civilian goes his own ways just before Hunapu my #2 gets stuck in the forest, and only ever moves when ordered to board the evac helo.

• Did only one resistance fighter survive? (did he go alone or was he picked up at that house?)
• Do you know which one it was? Jegor, "resistance fighter", "young fighter" or "Mateas" (the sniper)?
• Did FALKE stop right after joining you again? Can you elaborate on that a bit more?

Thanks!

Yeah - they say Arma 1 coordinates, that's true. But I'm not in touch with the voice actors anymore so I can't correct that.