(Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies

[macguba]

It's not the dialogue.     I nearly did the same thing.   By the time you get the instruction to go to Houdan, you are fed up of running errands.     Ideally there needs to be a break somewhere.   The mission certainly needs to be able to cope with the player turning up at Houdan at almost any stage.

[THobson]

I think it is okay.  It just means that the player might be puzzled for a while until they get to Houdan when more of the jogsaw is put into place.  In fact the new briefing activiely discourages the player from going to Houdan.  I will have a look at whether I need different dialogue at Houdan depending on whether the player has been to La Trinite and/or war has broken out.

[Mikero]

>war starts

What you have at the moment is just a debug hint in the form of a sound file.

voila

>tank in base camp.

This may be the same 'undocumented feature', since fixed, where I encontered one of the jeeps at the base on my return.

the feeling of security at the base must be maintained Thob, if the player doesn't get relief, she will -endmisssion.

>marketplace

at moment, the town is a ghost, and that is the major issue, an unexplained feeling of why? Stumbling into all of these goodies should be explained somehow.

Going to La Trinite before Houdan

Everybody goes there first. It's direct line of fire from the last civilian collection. Where on earth else would you go? The strong hint at that point to attack Chapoi, won't stop a sticky beack at Trinite. In my view, this is central to the mission that you DO go to Trinite 'first'.  The entire credibility of what is happening at this moment, and what is going to happen soon, rests with those convoys at that specific geographical balance point. In my view, (again) I would place intriguiging to the player, radiation signs around T3. This would be consistent with the very slow build up to the general firefights to come later. Eg, nothing much (other than Vigny) has been happening to player. To move her on into T3, which again, *might* not result in a firefight is consistent.

T3 is the key, Thob, to your next release. All your other posts indicate commendable improvements patches and fixes to the mission general, but it is T3 which will be the jaw dropper.

By the time you get the instruction to go to Houdan, you are fed up of running errands.  

Voila again.

Ideally there needs to be a break somewhere.

or, as I put it, I needed a firefight to test my hodge-podge.

Assuming we're all agreed on this is eye-patch, 3 teeth missing, 100+ player territory, I along with all the other broken teeth veterans KNOW that we have to check who does what in our squad, that left and right flanks are never in balance. We should learn early Thob to care greatly about the individuals in our pack (another thing we agree  on). I suggested road blocks. They don't need barriers as such. Campfire outposts would do.

apologies in advance for sounding so dogmatic

[THobson]

apologies in advance for sounding so dogmatic

Why chose now to start apologising? ;D

The challenge is a good one.  I have got used to treating 3 like eggshells.  The least little mistake there and war starts on its own - which would be a disaster to the mission.  It does need something, preferably not involving people.  I have thought lot about having a barrier across the main road, but am concerned this will trap either armour or infantry, to the detriment of the mission.

One of the problems with this errand running is that convention has it that these need to be "objectives" which psychologically seems to drive some linearity of thinking.  I am trying to get away from this in the next version.  The challenge is how to remind the player of what there is to do, should he chose to do so, with out making them all full blown objectives.  I have a couple of solutions.

My biggest challenge at the moment is something that has had very little air time here.

No - the tank at the base camp got there by other means than your jeep.  It was genuinely looking for baddies.

EDIT:
On the security of the lodge.  These are two big bad armies and you are a little group.  If you lead them back to your base you sholdn't be surprised at getting hammered there.

EDIT EDIT:
By the way I will be away for a few days so communicaiton will be intermittent.

[macguba]

La Trinite is indeed a bit of a ghost town, unexplained if you get there "early".   However I'm not convinced that's a bad thing, not least because the odds are that a convoy will turn up while your puzzling over it.     mikero is right though, it is key and it probably would benefit from something though since I'm not entirely clear in my mind on what's wrong it's hard to suggest anything.

Forget the "objectives".   We have a couple at the start - Vigny then the lodge - and that's enough to get us underway.   If you really need a rigid linear series of objectives you're playing the wrong mission anyway.    The problem is more that you have a linear series of objectives and need to disguise it in some way.

What's the big challenge?

[Mikero]

What's the big challenge?

god, thought that would be obvious Mac,

that THobson actually play this bloody mission himself!

<slap>

[Planck]

In my view, this is central to the mission that you DO go to Trinite 'first'.

I must disagree here....

I thought the whole idea was to have a free hand on where you went first and what you did when you got there.

It's the way I have viewed this mission anyway.

The locations you would decide to visit first will probably be decided from any information you manage to garner from various sources at the time.

So, when you find out about the civilians needing rescued you can set about doing that, on the other hand, you can't count on the player doing that first.

The player might decide to go 'walkabout' and explore this world.


Planck

[Mikero]

Your logic's hard to argue with Planck.

I'll reword it another way (just as arguable)

T3 is neutral ground geographically, it doesn't contribute to bias one side vs the other (until that is you kill one of the convoys, if you kill one of the convoys). The natural lean is to go to T3 because we are at that point closer to it than anywhere else. If Thob was trying to maintain a neutral, give-no-clues-or-suggestions, what to do next, then T3 would be his bend into the player. (unfoturtunately the conversation about captured women does bias it south)

it is also the only place left where he can develop a major theme which doesn't cause bias, eg we can't go to Le port, or anywhere else. And, the  major theme is needed, to rid T3 of ghosts.

Apart from that, cant do anything more than agree with you 110% of everything you've pointed out.

[Sir Test-A-Lot]

Downloaded OK….

Wow…that's the best overview I have ever seen. Great picture, dramatic and gives an all-encompassing look into the situation. Text summary is perfect. I'm no authority on mission making so maybe my opinion doesn't count for much- but that's the best overview I've ever seen.

Intro

Couldn't view it. I got a missing addon error. However, this is not a fault of your mission, this is a problem in my game…it's happened before and I haven't been able to fix it in a while because I'm lazy.

Briefing

Since this is not a conventional mission many rules for briefings go out the window. No spelling errors….everything looks good. I hope there isn't anything important that I missed in the Intro.

OK, I took a closer look at the briefing. This is one of the best I have ever seen. Frankly, it made me want to play this mission. I won't even go into the details of how this was good or that was great.

Mission

Well I can't see anything so I don't bother watching my back for patrols.
The town is destroyed, but either by script or my FlashFX all the homes are burning and seriously slowing down my PC. I wait a while for the fires to burn low and my computer to speed up.

Great voice work. Great sound effects. I see a woman in the building with soldiers. They see me. I hide under a truck. Oh, of course my bullets bounce off the truck, but theirs have no trouble finding my head. Restart.

Then OFP crashes. This might be my computer's fault because, it has a lot of problems. If it does this every time I try to restart, I'm going to be very put out.

Well it appears that it IS going to do that. Every time. I get an error, ("no entry at ‘/GameState/Variables/Item146/data.value'). I think this is a problem on my end though, not yours. Or else this is the "savegame bug" that you were talking about. Is it?

This vexes me. I'm terribly vexed.

EDIT: Ok, I read up a bit at the begining of the topic and there was a savegame bug that affected people with ECP? I use FlashFX, maybe that is my problem. I'll try disabling it and playing again.

Well I managed to get to the lodge without dying this time. I went myself on foot to get the first bunch of civvies. They followed me (they didn't join me though, which doesn't bother me) but the resistance guy walked in safe mode the whole way back.

I got them all back to the lodge, but nothing happened. The objective didn't tick, no cutscene, nothing. I tried herding them into the house. Nothing. I dragged them all over the area but nothing happened. Then I tried shooting their resistance leader. He's invincible for some reason.    I fired three rounds into his head.....either this is an odd bug or you meant to have it that way, but I can't imagine why. Maybe it's just me.

Killed some of the civvies and got a big red x on the objective and then was shot (as I expected) by my guys. That's all I've done so far.

[Mikero]

I'm no authority on mission making so maybe my opinion doesn't count for much

NON scripters are valuable people here. We are the only ones who can say "The Emperor has no clothes"

[macguba]

I'm no authority on mission making so maybe my opinion doesn't count for much- but that's the best overview I've ever seen.

I think that's a pretty helpful remark.    The vital bit is the qualification, which gives it context.  An embittered old hack like me saying something is the best I've ever seen is one thing, and you saying it is another.    Both would be helpful.

However IMHO the qualification is a bit too self-deprecating:  your opinion counts for as much as anybody else's.    But non-mission editor, relatively new beta testers are extremely valuable, particularly in a long running mission like this where the regular testers like mikero and me know the mission almost as well as the THobson.

Try and get the Intro to work, it's good and sets up the story.

I've never had the savegame bug so I'm not sure if that's it.  Could well be.   Certainly try playing with as clean an OFP installation as possible - it is a very big mission.

[THobson]

Due to a stupid cock-up on my part I have just spent nearly three days without a computer.  The first two were the worst, after that is was just cold sweats, headaches and dizzy spells.

Sir Test-a-lot:
Your opinion certainly does carry as much weight as others. I say that not because you were so complementary - but it is true of all who come here.  All I really ask is that if people realy like or don't like something they say why.  Anyway, just for the avoidance of doubt you seem to have found a serious bug.  One that I thought I had dealt with but clearly had not.  In fact there are two:

but the resistance guy walked in safe mode the whole way back.

I got them all back to the lodge, but nothing happened. The objective didn't tick, no cutscene, nothing. I tried herding them into the house. Nothing

Bloody good catch on your part and bloody stupid of me.  Next time take a truck with only one of your squad with you and all should be fine.  In the next version I will make sure it works however you get there - even if you crawl all the way.

got a missing addon error

I do not do addons, in part so that I know my misisons will not cause this problem.

no entry at ‘/GameState/Variables/Item146/data.value'

That is indeed the large savegame bug.  There are two solutions
- turn off all addons
- change the name of your save file, restart the mission from the beginning, when you are in the mission <alt><tab> out change the file name back to what it was, open Flashpoint and you should then be able to Resume from your save file.

I hope you have not been put off by all this.  I cannot imagine how slow the mission must have been with most of the buildings on the island in flames!

What's the big challenge?

Not a challenge anymore - with lots of time on my hands with paper and pencil (an amazing user interface bye the way, you can take it anywhere, it doesn't need power, the memory is not volatile and with the optional addon 'erazer' you can reuse the display indefinitely - I am sure it will catch on in a big way) I now have an answer.  I don't want to sound coy but I would rather not discuss it publicly.  I am not sure why I mentioned it.  Now I sound coy.

I also have a solution to the linerarity of the objectives.

Mac I am taking your advice and piling it all in - when I find the misison is too heavy I will thenstart winding stuff out.  There is still a huge amount to do berfore the next issue - and that is assuming I don't touch the Intro and enscene which we are all agreed needs work.


EDIT:

NON scripters are valuable people here. We are the only ones who can say "The Emperor has no clothes"

Having been on the receiving end of suggesitons from mikero I have to say I whole heartedly agree, but for a different reason.  If you are unaware of the constraints imposed by what seems to be possible in OFP you can make quite outlandish suggestions that can act as a challenge to the mission builder to think differently and to try something new.

[Sir Test-A-Lot]

I do not do addons, in part so that I know my misisons will not cause this problem.

Yeah, the problem's on my end.

That is indeed the large savegame bug.  There are two solutions
- turn off all addons
- change the name of your save file, restart the mission from the beginning, when you are in the mission <alt><tab> out change the file name back to what it was, open Flashpoint and you should then be able to Resume from your save file.

I had a couple of mods running. I turned them all off and that bug seems to be gone now.

[THobson]

I had a couple of mods running. I turned them all off and that bug seems to be gone now.

Excellent.  If you tell me what they are I could put a warning in the readme file.  You mentioned FlashFX, is there another?

@mikero: There are some emperors here but I am not one of them, I only joined this site just over a year ago and if you look at my missions in the mission dept you will see that my 'early works' were not well regarded - and quite rightly so in my view.

[Sir Test-A-Lot]

Thobson- Yes, FlashFX is the first. The other is "SANCANIM", which converts the BIS animations to new ones.

Well I tried to get the civvies with the truck this time- put a squaddie in the praga and drove down...they all got in....and got out at the lodge, but nothing happened.   Everything else seemed to work, the sound files and all.

Well, determined to play this, and not wanting these civvies following me everywhere, I lured them into the lodge and then blocked the exits with the car and the praga. I hope the mission still works.