Escape MP Mission

[Pravit]

I'm working on an MP mission for an upcoming LAN party. It's a co-op mission: the players start out scattered around southern Everon. The objective is for all playeres to get to the plane at the airstrip and escape. There are lots of civilian cars and trucks driving around the highways waiting to be hijacked, as well as enemy military patrols in APCs and trucks. Major towns have a substantial enemy troop presence, and there's a full garrison at the airstrip and the base nearby. To prevent players from simply taking an hour or so walking to the airstrip and then having a battle, there's a time limit of 20-30 minutes(haven't decided what works best yet). I'm thinking of making one player a sniper, one a silenced weapons specialist, one an antitank(in case the APCs find you), and one somethng else.

But I'm having a few problems: If you hitch a ride in a civilian car, even if you drive really slowly or stop in front of an enemy squad, they won't shoot or even at least switch out of SAFE mode. However if you're driving, even if you zoom past some guys in a city 200 yards away, they'll open up on you. Could anyone help me write a script that makes the enemy soldiers shoot at you only if you're driving close and slow enough? And that they'd shoot at you even if you were a passenger in a civvie car?

Does anyone know how to make working vehicle checkpoints? All I want is for some soldiers to be standing in the road and having each car stop and then go on. But it doesn't work with the AI- they just try to drive around in the countryside if they see people in the road.

One more question: How did BIS get the cars to stop on radio command in the "Status Quo" mission? I looked at it in the Mission Editor but there are about a hundred triggers with lines all over the place.

[rhysduk]

Hi Pravit

I like this idea a lot.. need help lol

Could anyone help me write a script that makes the enemy soldiers shoot at you only if you're driving close and slow enough? And that they'd shoot at you even if you were a passenger in a civvie car?

You might like to look at this thread here :- http://www.ofpec.com/yabbse/index.php?board=6;action=display;threadid=14652

About a road block script might be helpful - might not ...

A few other factors you might like to consider are :-

1.) -- Vehicle was travelling over a specified speed
2.) -- Vehicle broke a distance barrier
3.) -- Only fired on human targets if fired upon

You mentioned that you might / will make one player a Silenced Weapon Specialist ?? Maybe you could inlcude a script for silent killing.. taking distance into account and the detection of this ksilent killing by close by enemy troops ?? Yes ?? No ??

Id be happy to help you dude.. do you have anything to show me/us at this current moment ?
Regards Rhys

[Pravit]

Hey Rhysduk, glad someone saw my post  ;D
I'd be glad to use any help. I actually have a half-working mission, but for now there's only one player. Problem is it got screwed up or something, I'm posting about it in another thread. If I get it to work again, I'll post it.

I did see my other thread there about the roadblock, thanks

So far I've written a decent roadblock script based on "alarm areas." Each VCP has a squad of about 5 men and a 5 ton truck by the side of the road. Each has a guard zone, e.g. "PROMON" for the road from Provins-Montignac. I used triggers for east side detected by resistance in certain areas which will set "alarmzone" to different strings e.g. "AIRFIELD", "VALLEY" and so on. If the alarmzone string corresponds with the guard zone, the VCP goes on alert. This means that they will switch out of 'SAFE' mode, drive the 5ton truck into the middle of the road, and start running my other script - the one which makes them fire on civilian cars that the player is riding in.
If the player zooms by a VCP that isn't on alert, the guys will all pile into their truck and chase after him. Well, technically they chase after his car, so if you realize the guards are all on your tail, you can ditch your car and get a new one.
Using the alarm areas I also have several APCs sitting in bases, and if a particular area goes off they will drive over and investigate.  The trucks driving around making patrols will also chase you if you drive by them.

The troops will fire on a civilian car if it's close enough to them and going fairly slowly. This works great with the roadblock - say you're seen getting into a car, then that zone goes on alert. The truck is moved into the road, and the civvie has to slow down. Then the guy with the MG3 empties about 400 rounds into the Trabant. End of story  ;D

What I still haven't worked out is how to get civilians to drive reasonably around VCPs(in my mission they're just a couple guys standing in the road and a truck nearby with its lights on). The civilians just try to drive around it, which is logical, but it looks stupid. I'd like to have them stop, the guards move out of the way, and then drive on. Or at least have them slow down before they get waved on. I'm afraid this will cause terrible "traffic jams"though. If the drivers see a stopped car in front of them they try to drive around it, leading to about 4 cars and trucks driving around in the countryside...

The silenced weapon guy makes the mission way too easy. He can do it easily enough alone (stopping before VCPs, killing everybody, then driving on). I might consider implementing something that makes it harder for him, but then again, it would just be much easier to give him an AK74 like everyone else

Besides that, I figured out how to make the civvie stop on radio command, and also how to make him take you to the airport on radio command(instead of continually looping around on the path I give them).

[macguba]

To make AI vehicles "use" a VCP properly you're going to have to give them lots of waypoints, triggers and/or scripts.    The problem is that you have an almost endless if-then tree

If there are no other vehicles at the VCP them stop here
If there is one then stop there
If there are two stop whereever
If there is firing nearby do this
If there are no soldiers at the VCP do that

yadda yadda yadda

Each one individually is not too hard, but altogether it's going to be a lot of work.    I'd partly fake it:  for example run a slow loop on each civvy so that if it gets too close to another it just stops on the open road for a bit.

What  you've got sounds like fun.    The weapons playtesting will take you a while.  ;D    Makes a biiiiig difference, the weapons you can have.    Maybe keep the silenced loon but there's no more ammo anywhere on the island so he has to look after it.    Maybe a silenced Glock rather than a Bizon/HK?

[Pravit]

Yea, for now I'm pretty much giving up on the "make civvies stop at a VCP" idea, it seems a bit too difficult. Plus if they pass by another car going the opposite way, they'll stop   There isn't all that much traffic in my mission anyway, so it shouldn't be noticeable unless you intentionally hide outside the VCP watching cars go by  

I don't have resistance, so no pistols   I looked on amazon.com for it and it says they're out of stock, and my local sotware store is too... :'(

Right now I'm having a problem with making a group do things with a car. For some reason,
_car = _this select 0
@somecondition
"_x assignascargo _car" foreach units somegroup; "[_x] ordergetin TRUE" foreach units somegroup
won't work. I could just make "car" global, but if there's more than one car, the squads will try running halfway across Everon to board one particular car.

You can try a test mission with two VCPs and a civilian driver. There is an unarmed enemy soldeir with his back to you - get his attention to put the VCPs on alarm, or just shoot him to get past unharmed(text will tell you if a VCP goes on alert). You can ride with the civvy to test out the guards shooting your car up if you're close enough, or just shoot him and drive yourself.

Right now the only thing the VCP guards will do is drive their truck into the road if they go on alert. I'm trying to get them to pile into their truck and  chase you if you zoom by really quickly, but it won't work - you can look at it in the roadguard.sqs if you want to.

http://www.freewebs.com/pravit/VCP4.zip