Smoke on battle field help plzzz

[CptBravo]

Hi everyone,

I am creating a mission where the enemy attacks a well defended town. I need the enemy AI to use smoke to cover their advancment.

The question is .. HOW?? How do I get the enemy to use smoke to cover the battle field with smoke before they advance??

GameLOgic?Triggers? Waypoints??

Any help is grrrrreatly appreciated!!

 

[MorMel]

I think there are several ways:

order an unit to "fire" (i mean throw) a smokeshell;
CamCreate a smoke shell;
etc...

---

How to make a unit throw the shell:

_myofficer fire ["smokeshell",1]  //Check out the syntax, may not work

---

CamCreate the smoke:

_smoke = "smokeshell" CamCreate MyPos

Where MyPos are the coordinates of the place u wanna create the smoke.

MyPos= GetPos _object
Mypos=[2040,4004,2]          // [x,y,z]

---

Note: If u use these commands on the Activ. Field or Init Field, remove the 'underscore' - _ - from the variables!


FX:

I'm working with smoke effects to. If you want to simulate a town on fire, place a jeep wreck inside of a closed house and then use a trigger combination to repair and destroy the wreck every 15s. It will burn until the game is finished (or a certain variable becomes permanently false).
You could also place a 'fire' object inside that house and at the INIT Field type < this inflame true >, and it will be burning. I wouldn't use it as the player could put out the fire and realize that the burning house is just a stupid simulation.
Last hour: i have never tried this but i think it works: Place the jeep wreck (or tank or anything which burns) at the "smoking" place, use the trigger combo to make it burn and set its height 2 or 3 meters underground - This setpos [getpos this select 0, getpos this select 1, (getpos this select 2) -2].

[Chris Death]

FX:

I'm working with smoke effects to. If you want to simulate a town on fire, place a jeep wreck inside of a closed house and then use a trigger combination to repair and destroy the wreck every 15s. It will burn until the game is finished (or a certain variable becomes permanently false).
You could also place a 'fire' object inside that house and at the INIT Field type < this inflame true >, and it will be burning. I wouldn't use it as the player could put out the fire and realize that the burning house is just a stupid simulation.
Last hour: i have never tried this but i think it works: Place the jeep wreck (or tank or anything which burns) at the "smoking" place, use the trigger combo to make it burn and set its height 2 or 3 meters underground - This setpos [getpos this select 0, getpos this select 1, (getpos this select 2) -2].

Just for info - there's a method, which is far way smarter than
digging in vehicles or setdammag'ing them.

The unbelievable "drop" command.

Do a search for the drop command (it looks very complicated first ..... and after  ) but it's very powerfull when it comes
to effects.

Just check this black-smoke script out.

copy paste it in a sqs-file, then use it as described on top
of the script.

Code: [Select]

;==>blsmoke.sqs<==
;[(getpos object),time_to_last] exec "blsmoke.sqs"
_pos = _this select 0
_lifeTime = _this select 1
_delay = 0.3
_lifeTicks = _lifeTime / _delay
_lifeTick = _lifeTicks

#Begin

drop ["cl_basic", "", "Billboard", 1, 55+ (random 15), _pos,[(random 1 - random 2),(random 1 - random 2),random 2], 1, 0.005, 0.0042, 0.1, [0.2,15,25], [[0.1,0.1,0.1,0.6], [0.1,0.1,0.1,0.5 * _lifeTick/_lifeTicks], [0.1,0.1,0.1,0.4 * _lifeTick/_lifeTicks], [0.1,0.1,0.1,0.3], [0.1,0.1,0.1,0.3]], [0,1,0,1,0,1], 40, 0.2, "", "", ""]

~_delay

_lifeTick = _lifeTick - 1
?_lifeTick > 0 : goto "Begin"
exit
~S~ CD

[Plizkin]

hey MorMel,
its not
PEACE * PAZ * PAIX * FRIENDEN *
its
PEACE * PAZ * PAIX * FRIEDEN *
 ;D  
I know better than you, `cuz I live in Germany.

[Plizkin]

should the soldiers throw the smokeShells ?
Then they MUST have some in theire equipment, then put this in a script or in a trigger:

MySoldier fire["SmokeShell","SmokeShell"]

[MorMel]

Just for info - there's a method, which is far way smarter than
digging in vehicles or setdammag'ing them.

YEAH YEAH YEAH... But i don't have any "drop" commands as i'm using OFPv1.00...   . Therefore i must use the "wreck" method.

PEACE * PAZ * PAIX * FRIEDEN *

Thank you, Plizkin! But don't forget "MIR", which means "Peace" in russian!

About your last post:

I searched for the fire command and i figured out that my syntax is wrong. It should be -

MyOfficer fire ["throw","SmokeShell"]

Where "MyOfficer" is a unit containing smokeshells ONLY!! So you must removes the grenades from him : this removemagazine "handgrenade"; this removemagazine "handgrenade".

Hope that's enough to answer you!  

[CptBravo]

Thank you every one for your help! I finally got it to work!!

Just one question .. even though the battle field now is filled with smoke, the enemy still shoots and kills through it??!!! Is the smoke just cosmetic in OFP and regadless the AI will always see you??

Thanks for the help.

[Chris Death]

Just one question .. even though the battle field now is filled with smoke, the enemy still shoots and kills through it??!!! Is the smoke just cosmetic in OFP and regadless the AI will always see you??

This is what it looks like for the AI's:

Code: [Select]

000011001110001001001011100101010001011
Smoke is just the optical cosmetics as you already supposed
it to be.

Even client players in multiplayer are able to disable their
smoke effects, to keep having an "all seeing eye"  

~S~ CD

[Kaliyuga]

 Fraid so Cap... that smoke is just fer looks....

comes in handy for MP though ;D

[CptBravo]

Hi guys,

Thanks for your response. I assume there is no script out there that would make the AI "partially blind" when smoke is used??

That would add a whole new technical level to OFP I think.

Thanks again.

[macguba]

I haven't heard of one (but I'm no expert, so it doesn't mean there isn't one) but I do know that BIS looked at making smoke opaque to AI units but gave up because it was too difficult, or at least not worth the trouble.

You could fake it to some extent by detecting when a smoke grendade was fired, detecting the place it landed (maybe?), checking the direction an AI unit was looking, checking if there was a unit in that direction behind the smoke, and if there was reducing the "knowsabout".    But that would be a helluva script.


Edit:  I've just read that and remembered that knowsabout is a condition command, you can't "reduce the knowsabout".    So I'm talking nonsense again.

[MorMel]

SHIT!!! It means that i've been acting like a dummy, throwing smoke shells and covering myself behind them...?! But it seemed it worked! So smoke is like glass for the AI, hum...?
Are you sure... i would swear that the AI couldn't see me, just like it doesn't when i'm lyied behind a fence...

Now, contributing for this thread, i once made a very simple script which could detect what a certain unit was facing. There are some treaks also that could deceive the AI.
Setcaptive, for example - use a script which makes a unit captive for a few seconds and then makes it targetable again. That script should be activated when 'unit distance smoke' < 3, for example... NearestObject would be useful to in order to detect those units.