[SP] Operation Hellfire (Review Complete)

[RKurtzDmitriyev]

I am not sure if lag in Morton is fixable, unless I change how the mission plays (i.e. don't make it a massive landing, which was the point of the mission).

Perhaps during the cutscene you could spawn Russian units in Figari and the camp using createunit, rather than placing them from the start. Or maybe place only the group leaders at start. That way, you can still have their waypoints.

Edit: I tried joining the Foxtrot squad, and had no problems. Did you try to approach every guy in Foxtrot?

Maybe not, but I would prefer a trigger anyway. A join-and-lead waypoint will require you to find the leader and get within about 5 meters of him. I suppose that would be more true to real life, but then again, in real life one of the grunts could say to you, "Pssst! Our CO is over by that bush!"  

EDIT: Something just popped into my head. Regarding gear selection, the G36 is an anachronism for the Soviet era. Steyr AUG isn't, though. Then again, Red Hammer campaign had G36s and nobody seems to have noticed. It had too many bugs to notice such minutiae.

[Krieg]

you could spawn Russian units in Figari and the camp using createunit

I could...  But that will require a mass of scripting I've never really used before. I will try my best, though!

Maybe not, but I would prefer a trigger anyway.

I'll do it that way!

the G36 is an anachronism for the Soviet era

I'll remove it. Although, I have to admit that I hate to do that because that rifle solves up to 20 problems a minute for me.

[savedbygrace]

I playtested version 0.6 just now with same specs as before. Whatever weapons you decide to keep in the gear selection, it would be nice to have an option to rearm before pushing onto the next objective. I don't mean pick up an enemy weapon either. Perhaps spawn a 5Tammo and have it drive from the beach to the town center. I did notice the Medic tent way out of the way, kudos on that.

The scout team does eventually join the player once the player is near the leader but I am still having a problems with the AI pathfinding. I feel like I am playing Arma again. The group will not stay in formation, and they tend to take odd routes which puts them in away status calling back to me..."Where are you?" Objective two worked good this time around, the enemy responded well.

Bulldogs M60's got ahead of the abrams and were destroyed in figni, abrams pulled back and then advanced again while I crossed the fields. My guys eventually caught up to me on the hill crest overlooking figni.

The task to radio back that the landing is safe, is still not clear enough. It should be a seperate part of the first objective. The radio option becomes available when the town is cleared. The radio triggers the objective done.

GPS would be nice to help me locate the scout team quicker.

Other than these setbacks, its good.

[Krieg]

Thanks for the beta test, savedbygrace !

I'll add a 5T Ammo truck.

Fixed the hard-to-join issue via trigger. Now whenever you come close to the group itself it joins. Also, in order to make the event of joining important, added additional objective for it.

I am unsure if the dumb AI issue is fixable. Their skill level is set at the maximum.

Yeah, Pitbull's tanks tend to advance and retreat. I will hopefully solve this via "allowfleeing 0".

I will add additional objective for signaling that Morton is secure.

Ohh, now I remember... I actually did  add a script that enables GPS (i.e. "showGps true") and made player execute it via init field, but it never worked. Any solution for this?

[Zipper5]

To allow the GPS, you must put the following into your description.ext file:

Code: [Select]

showGPS = 1;
 

[Krieg]

Thanks a lot, Zipper!  

Edit: New version is up. Check the first post for download.

[savedbygrace]

Version 0.7

Lag? I haven't noticed any lag at all.
I never noticed the OnLoadMission text before either : is that new?
I noticed the hint and the objective in the notebook to call in the all clear.
I Really enjoyed the addition of Fog. It increased the immersion and difficulty slightly(which is a good thing)
The outro was better since you revised it, although the one camera angle that drifts through the smoke of the destruction sequence is blinding and not very complimentary of your explosion.
I also noticed a lot more radio text which would be excellent if it were actually voiced.
An Intro would be welcome and I am curious as to what part of the story you would highlight there.
Good work so far.

[Krieg]

I haven't noticed any lag at all.

That is good, because that means that createUnit does it's job well. Hopefully RKurtzDimitriyev will report the same thing!

I never noticed the OnLoadMission text : is that new?

Nope, I think I added it few versions ago.

I noticed the hint and the objective in the notebook to call in the all clear

Hint was there before, but the objective is new. There also should have been another objective to join Foxtrot, for which I think should have went pretty well, since now it is trigger based, and much easier to trigger. Also, a GPS should have showed up this time.

I Really enjoyed the addition of Fog.

Glad you did. I think I implemented it that it starts as usual but soon gets thicker and thicker.

I also noticed a lot more radio text

That means that all SITREP scripts worked, as well as my further messages.

which would be excellent if it were actually voiced.

I wish I get an opportunity to do that soon. I have knowledge to create "radio effect" using Audacity, but I need to buy new headsets so I can actually use the headset microphone.

The outro was better since you revised it

Glad it is. Camera.sqs does miracles!
And I will fix the smoke-and-flame part, it was meant to be there so player could watch T80 explode, but the problem is that they don't go via exactly same route every time.

An Intro would be welcome

It should be there in next version.

Good work so far.

Thanks!

Edit: OK, I finally did an voice-over for whole mission, after few hours of throat-breaking work.
Do not expect too large quality of the voices, though. I am not too talented.

[RKurtzDmitriyev]

Tested version 0.7  just now. And I actually beat it lolwutomgwtfbbq  .

Good work, it was an hour well spent.

Briefing

I can see my men's experience now . And don't be bummed about removing the G36. The Steyr AUG is almost as good.

Mission

I gave the Steyr AUG and Carl Gustav to myself, Uzis and LAW Launchers to my veterans 2 and 3, sniper rifle to the medic, and M60s to 5 and 6. Puma choppers both died by the time I hit the beach. I landed, tried to remain inconspicuous and let friendly AIs do most of the work. Still, I had to pitch in a little with my Steyr AUG when enemies targeted my squad. Took one casualty, inflicted a lot more. Finally there didn't seem to be any more infantry milling about. I moved to the edge of town and spied a damaged T80 still alive. Toasted him with my Carl Gustav, then was given option to radio in Morton cleared.

Moved carefully into the forest, but nobody ambushed us this time. Found Foxtrot, moved carefully through the forest. Went prone and again, left most of the work to friendly AIs. It was a classic OFP "crawl forward slowly and pick off enemies at objective" scenario. With 11 men, including 6 with silenced weapons, on our side, killing the infantry in the forest and camp was a piece of cake, no casualties. Peering through the trees at the edge of the forest, a LAW dude and I stood up and toasted one of the T80s. Figuring that the odds will now be even, I radioed in Pitbull. They took out the other T80 easily. Second objective cleared.

I emerged from the forest to find that heavy fog and a rainstorm had come down. Now I could see only 200m or less. I heard (or rather read) Pitbull screaming that they needed to pull out. Two of them seemed to die quickly, but an M60 was still milling around for a while. Maybe he fled from his formation. I got a little disoriented in the heavy fog (I forgot I had GPS for a while). An enemy patrol came up roughly 8 o clock behind me, but we were still able to wipe them out alright. After rediscovering GPS, I climbed the hill southeast of Figari and crept slowly forward to the town. The remaining M60 finally decided to barge into Figari. I heard his gun firing, apparently the enemy was now too weak to fight him off.

The enemy infantry here were much smarter, though. They seemed to spot us very well, so my usual tactic of remaining inconspicuous didn't work out as well as usual. As I crept forward I had a hard time seeing enemy infantry come into view. Took a bunch of casualties here--actually all of my even numbers died. But some quick shooting and careful prone moving once again won the day. I entered the town, worried that there must be infantry still hiding somewhere. The M60 was still alive and parked in town, but not making himself useful. Around a corner I spied a damaged T80. Hurled an RPG at him, kaboom, mission complete.

Anyway, now that my story is over, some issues:

--When I play from single missions, there is a slight "flicker" at the beginning before the black in takes effect. It's as though the computer takes fraction of a second to realise that there's supposed to be a black-in. This doesn't happen in the mission editor. Not sure if it can be fixed. It might depend on the player's specs.
--I just noticed this right now. Your briefing alludes to using the cliffs as cover and having to climb them, but the boats always drop me off (more like teleport me) on flat ground on top of the cliffs.
--I still had a little trouble getting Foxtrot to join me. Even after I walked right over one of their men, it still took a minute for them to join me. The trigger may not be extending far enough.
--Foxtrot still doesn't have their anti-tank magazines. I think the problem is that, although you put "addmagazine" commands in their initialization, you didn't remove any magazines to give them room, so the commands are ignored.
--An M60 tank arrived in Figari, and killed a few enemies. But after he killed everyone he could see, he simply parked there and didn't take any action even when my men spotted enemy infantry. A guard waypoint for Pitbull at Figari might fix this.
--The final objective of "secure Figari" didn't tick at the end.
--Opening up the mission in the editor, I observed that the squad next to the machine gun in Figari is completely placed at the beginning, not with your createunit script.
--Regarding your radio chatter, if you're interested I can help with voice acting. Obviously, I have a passable American accent.

Some good points, though:

--I loved the fog, too. Actually I hated it as someone trying not to get shot, but I loved it as someone who likes good OFP missions.  So the fog was a great idea.
--Lag was no longer significant, I didn't notice any at all after about a minute of the firefight. Everything looks good in this department.

Outro

Looks good, except that it's a little jarring that the fog has completely disappeared once the Outro starts. It might better preserve the emotional atmosphere of the mission if you have some more fog.

Overall

Good job, you probably just need some minor fixes and the planned intro, and OFPEC can have another mission in its repository.

[Krieg]

Briefing

Glad it is fixed!

Mission

Nice story!

Hmm... That flicker does not happen on my PC, I guess those 2GB of ram manage to do it correctly. I'll try to fix it, but I will be working pretty much blindly, because I won't be able to notice the difference.
Maybe I could do it using the benchmark command?

That is an OFP bug, since I did not script you to teleport onto flat terrain.

I'll increase the size of the trigger.

Hmm... I might remove their satchel charges, although, that would make the camp too easy.

I'll add that guard waypoint.

I'll fix the last objective.

I personally thought that 5 squads were enough, so I left one out. That was rather intentional.


That's a really nice offer, RKurtzDimitriyev, although all voices are already done, but I'll seriously consider it depending on how does community respond to my (edited by Audacity) voices.
Although, one hilarity I have to admit, I did player's voices with Russian accent (though that is backed up with the story).

Outro

I'll add the fog!

Overall

Thanks for optimism and support!
The pre-final (hopefully) version will come out either today or tomorrow!

[RKurtzDmitriyev]

Hmm... That flicker does not happen on my PC, I guess those 2GB of ram manage to do it correctly. I'll try to fix it, but I will be working pretty much blindly, because I won't be able to notice the difference.

I have 2GB of RAM too. Maybe it's an inferior grade of RAM. I tend to work with the computer hardware of yesterday for as long as I can get away with it. I guess if I were you I wouldn't worry too much about it. I doubt that most players with modern PCs will notice.

[Krieg]

I guess you are right, RKurtzDimitriyev.
I only have to add intro, and new version will be up!

[Krieg]

New version is finally up!
And it increased its size by couple of megabytes, but, that's what you get with voice acting.
When we are at voice acting, I am sorry if my voice acting is the poorest you ever heared, but I do not have any talent in voice acting whatsoever.

Enjoy!

[savedbygrace]

I have to applaude anyone who undertakes the task of adding voices to their mission. It adds tremendously to immersion.

All seemed to go well but I have a few more dislikes.

First, those radio messages from pitbull before did not bother me because they did not disrupt the sound and my ability to track the return fire of the enemy. As it it now, the sound files are way too loud. You can adjust this by lowering the db setting foreach sound file in the Description.

Also, the pitbull files were overlapping other sound files and it remves from the immersion a bit.

The medic tent at the forest still needs to be placed closer to thw woods out of the way of that darn tank. It crushes it every time and with no way to heal, a belly crawl brings us right back to beta 1.

The increased fog was okay. I thought for sure I was going to hate it because the enemy can see right through it. They were shooting at me when I couldn't even see them with my binobulars.But the density at figni was good because they didnt seem to see my approach.

The only problem with the fog increase is that you do it too quickly. It goes from bearable to boom can't see anything in seconds. Thats just unreal. That happened once I reached the house between the woods and figni.

The fadeout at the end of the mission fades out and then returns to normal screen before destroying the camera. Might want to kill the camera sooner.

The score did not reflect my performance very well. All objectives were ticked, but I had received two red X's.
You can adjust the score minimum and maximum in the Description.

Outro angles were much better though the one angle that drifts above and across the top of the tank carnage lingers for too long before switching to the specops on the hill.(there was no more action and the camera was still in slow motion above). It's better to lose some of the action then have a lull in it. Perhaps cut to the specops watching some of the action from his hiding spot? Just a thought.

[Krieg]

Thanks for the applaud!

I'll try to lower the Db in the description. I am pretty sure that solid -6 will do.

It is pretty much impossible to prevent that error: Apparently sounds are allowed to overlap in OFP, I know that changing cfgSound to cfgRadio would do, but I would not experiment too much at this point.

I'll move it away, but, I think that another problem is that tanks try to heal at medic tents after they are hurt.

Yes, I observed that behavior just  now, when I played the mission. Enemies throw grenades in my direction even though I can't see them. I'll reduce fog a little bit.

I'll try to handle that speed.

I'll handle the score issues - I am still using the same one from "The Final Stand".

I'll handle the angles.
____________________________________________________________________________________________

Two questions though.

1) How good was the intro?
2) Was the T80 in Morton too much stationary?

Edit: Made all corresponding changes,
I deem this project ready for review!

I thank all those who beta tested or played this mission.
Thank you all!