(Review Completed) [SP] The Black Gap

[Sui]

Hmmm.... valid point.

I just had it happen to me... the entire platoon was putting it's fire down on the M2 (which you're right, they can't hit), so they got butchered by the infantry... I'll see what sort of fix I can cook up

[LCD]

ill test it i think

wen i have taam

LCD OUT

[Tim Pink]

i just found a problem with the command interface.
when i took over as platoon leader this anoying radio call kept saying "group, move to tree 10 o'clock" and it would not stop.

is this a bug?

Tim

[Sui]

Sorry for being incommunicado for the last month or so guys...

Upon upgrading my PC the motherboard cooked itself and the brand new CPU I had put in it.

Anyway, I'm currently fighting with ASUS (and have been for the last month) to get them to honour their warranty for selling me dodgey parts...

Anyway, this mission is definately still in the pipeline. I've got a HUGE list of improvements I plan to implement, but won't be able to until I get my machine up and running again.

Thanks for your patience... I'll be back in full swing hopefully within 2 weeks.

[asmodeus]

That sucks Sui!!

Good luck fighting the corporate battle.  I know how that goes.   :-\

I look forward to testing the next version!  

Asmo

[SEAL84]

Grabbing mission now...will play tomorrow.

*hopes all is well with Sui*

[Sui]

*bumpity bump*

The cheese ads in my country are always saying that 'good things take time'. ;D
So here we go, revised version. Please check the first post in this thread for download location...

[dmakatra]

Allright! I knew you'd update it! Maybe 'cause you told me so at '85 forums but whatever. ;D

*Downloading but with a different machine than last time. Huzzah!* ;D

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[GI-YO]

Always been a fan of your missions so look forward to this.

OVERVIEW - fine does its job. Nice picky

INTRO - WOW awesome. All realy good except some of the soldiers at the start in the newly captured town keep aiming there guns at stuff, and the medic by the body bags looks like he's just about to shoot the corpses. The airport part was wicked all the swicthmove/playmove stuff made them look like real people not robots. Why are they all standing in the rain?

BRIEFING - Good again lots of information on the assault, on what forces we'll be fighting with. You mentined somewhere visibility down to 500 meters, to me that seems like quite alot cause the M-16 spose to be accuate out to 300-350 meters, or did you mean 50 meters? only a minor thing though....

MISSION - the old falling asleep in a helicopter gag  ;D i like it! We land and move to the SW to secure the perimenter (sp), look at those yellow flashing things. that is a very groovy thing making it easier to understand whats happenin and where to go, check my formation and then move off in to the unknown...Hear some gun shots to the west and contact is reported over the radio. Cant see far enough to shoot at any reds so keep my eyes peeled, then im ordered to run and intercept the recce squad (seems quite risky sending only alpha into the unknown to chase an unknown amount of men, could be a trap) but i run to slow and am ordered back into formation, than a contact to the east but again i cant see much, wondering if i'll shoot anyone at all today  ...Right then we near the enemy positions and we hold fire and i scout ahead to see whats there, lots of reds maybe i will get some action today, after the assualt launches i get shot quite rapidly and die. again i try but this time move forward slowly looking for targets but become the target of a sniper who dispatches me and most of my squad. again i try.This time is better i move my squad forward putting down lots of fire dropping reds as they come thick and fast. As i move into the camp area i become overall commander and try to use the control interface but all the reds are gone   this tools looks awesome and im sure we'll be seeing it in future missions,

OUTRO - like the big bang and the satasfaction of seeing them tanks roll, i did that, me and my sqauds.

duration 33 mins
score 1240
kills
officer
machine gunner
soldier

OVERALL - this is one awesome mission with no faults that let it down, except the one that was mentioned earlier about the constand "9move to bush 4 oclock" etc etc once you have taken total command. and the men in the intro with guns up and aiming. Good stuff.

GI-YO

[dmakatra]

OVERVIEW:
Nice. You're gonna change the head picture right? 'Cause you used the same in Facile Ground...
INTRO:
Missed it, 'cause I had my BAS mod folder activated, and y'know BAS and their error messages... Besides I had winamp with Tubular Bells playing so I'd missed all the audio anyway.
BRIEFING:
That's one nice briefing I say. However, I thought the 2nd lieutie was the 2nd IC? Anyway, I'm no military freak, although I'd like to know everything like that so I can design realistic missions myself. Dammit, now I have to change my own project. ;D
Hmmm... You don't give me much to play with. And I freakkin knew you'd include that bleeding M203! ;D
MISSION:
Of course I'll let him down, who does he think I am? ;D
He-hey! Chopperdust! Nice! ;D
I think you should remove command of my squad untill needed. I could order them to eject and stuff.
Ah, why me? St00pid lieutie! ;D
Still think you should be able to remove the formation guide if you wanted. It looks cool but you might want something more realistic or it might be in the way or whatever.
Formation guide says A should be top left, but I'm the rear team.
Duuuuude, that guy is definatley not gonna be in the 4th mission of this series. Don't you just love when your whole platoon fires a M16 bursts at the same time into the same guy? ;D
Use round numbers. 70, 90 meters are both hard to see. Use like 20, 50, 100, 150, etc.
The whole platoon stopped at EJ39. Couldn't do much more. Quit. :-\

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[SEAL84]

Played a little while ago...

Had some enemy contact in the trees just off the LZ to the SW...a couple of guys were killed - none of mine though - and we moved along.

Surprised the hell out of the guys at the OP...Charlie squad rushed them head-on and lost 3 men but I ran up behind them and emptied my XM177 into them.  I heard Russian speech over a radio but whatever, the LT told me they didn't get a message off.  I shot the radio anyway.

Crawled into position near their line and told my men to target a bunch of enemies so that once the order was given we'd take them out immediately.  This worked reasonably well, but the enemy soldiers somehow kept spotting me through the fog from like 150m away and shooting me in the head.  Finally after like 6 retries we broke through the lines and got into their little compound.  I lost two-thirds of my squad to Russians none of us saw...inspecting the bodies revealed that a good number of them were just standing around, so when the shooting started, they proned out and stayed there.  VERY irritating.

So I clear the tower and head back down to the ground - two Urals full of Russians pull up and get blown away, but not before a couple of soldiers jump out and kill the LT.  Why didn't these trucks unload a safe distance away and have the soldiers advance on foot?

I also noticed that there are some Spetznaz just standing around, including a sniper.  Why aren't they out making themselves useful somewhere?

Anyhow, I take overall command, but Alpha squad keeps radioing to move to   wire, 9 o'clock, and doesn't move.  I shoot one of them but no dice - they're not going anywhere.  I quit.

I'll have to take it from the top later tonight as I have stuff to do for the next few hours.

[Sui]

Thanks for playing guys

GI YO, I try to make it stop raining by the time that part of the intro rolls round. OFP doesn't have much in the way of 'portable rain covering'. I've overused the 'shed' object (camo netting) as it is
I'll just pretend they're of scottish descent, like me, and are hard men who don't feel the rain ;D
So the Lieutenant died after the assault? What did you think about the 'hand over' process? What I mean did you like having to run up to the soldier standing by the Lt's body, or would you have preferred it just to immediately put you in command?

Armsty, yeah... I'll definitely be doing some combat photograph to get a new OV pic once the mission comes out of beta.
About ejecting from the chopper... I thought I'd locked it so you couldn't? I'll check that to make sure I have...
Formation position, thanks for reminding me! I changed that to put the player in the action more. I'll update the picture.
The platoon stopping sounds like a nasty bug
So the Lt was still alive and not moving anywhere? I'd appreciate more details if you've got 'em.

SEAL ;D ;D How's it going mate?
The guys at the pass are supposed to engage the enemy actively, rather than just camping where they prone. I'll re-check my code...
Hmm... I'm a bit worried about this 'alpha move to wire' bit. Sounds like a looping move command I've got in there...

So what did people who saw it think of the command interface. It shouldn't get too much use in this mission, but I plan to rely on it pretty heavily in missions I've got coming up.
I tried to make it as intuitive as possible, but I'm not sure if I suceeded or not. Any opinions?

[SEAL84]

Indeed, I figured you'd used a looping move to keep the AIs in formation, but since I had been in that group before I took command, they felt it necessary to keep me appraised  

As far as the interface goes, it looked pretty good to me, but in the very brief time I fiddled with it I didn't see any "return to formation" command for the squads.  Was there one?  Since Alpha squad didn't want to follow me I didn't have the chance to test it out...I'll give it another try after I watch 24 ;D

Methinks I need to take a 203 with me next time, though.

BTW what happened to the project I lent my voice for?


****EDIT:  Second review below****

So I tried it again from the top, this time using Sanctuary's recently-released MARPAT config, which keeps all the BIS ballistics but swaps the models and sounds for those of the MARPAT addon.

This time I took my trusty M203 ;D

We came off the LZ with no contact and started moving towards the road.  Along the way we greased an AT team in some trees directly ahead of us and I saw two more infantrymen moving nearby - I dropped them and then got a message from the LT that a recon team was making a run for it and that we should intercept them.

This sounds exactly like what happened to that one platoon in We Were Soldiers - they went charging after a scout and got pinned.  Well, I chased anyway because it was over open ground...one of my guys called out "car, 2 o'clock, 200" but I didn't have a visual on either it or any scouts.  The objective was marked failed and back we went to the formation.  This time we did not hit the OP, but instead my squad led the way by flanking North of the Gap.

This position overlooking the Gap was much better than the one I had to the South the last time I tried, and even though I was supposed to be the maneuver element, I set my men in a line and picked targets for each of them for our opening volley.  When we were set I radioed in and the fun started - we dropped quite a few of them straight away with AR fire and grenades, but as my team advanced towards the road we lost 4 men.  We dispatched the two Urals and I cleared the tower.

The engineer worked his magic and we re-armed as the tanks chugged up to our position - LT Harris was alive and well, and it seemed that none of the other squads had taken enough casualties to merit reporting them.

The four tanks pulled up and inched up the road, and were fired upon by what sounded like BMPs - none of the tanks were destroyed and they killed the attackers quickly.  The infantry advanced slowly behind them and my team ran into what looked like a couple of Spetznaz stragglers in a stand of trees, then a full rifle squad - which killed another of my men just as we spotted them - off to our left, which I guess was SE of Arudy.  A T-72 wreck was just East of Arudy, and as we entered the town from the South we engaged one or two stray soldiers.  A few minutes later we declared the town secure and the outtro displaying our handiwork played.

No bugs to report this time, except that I think I killed the recon patrol I was supposed to chase.  LT Harris survived the mission and everything else ran smoothly.

[GI-YO]

Scotish aye, "aye I canne belive that captin" (like scottie from star trek). Maybe i'll let the rain issue slide then ;D I cant realy remeber what happened i seemed to just take control, but i was moving around alot and may have passed his corpes in the process. As for the command interface it looked real good, didnt realy get a chance to have a real play but i can see its potentential. Keep up the good work.

GI-YO

[dmakatra]

About ejecting from the chopper... I thought I'd locked it so you couldn't? I'll check that to make sure I have...
Well I didn't actually tried, but I had the option both in my action menu and going through the action (6) radio commands.

The platoon stopping sounds like a nasty bug
So the Lt was still alive and not moving anywhere? I'd appreciate more details if you've got 'em.
Well, we went for DJ39, just west of this small bunch of trees. The platoon just halted. The lieutie was alive but it seems that you've dowatched him or something because when I moved he kept looking at me all the time. Creepy bastard... Anyway, I tried to move around in the area if there were a trigger or a distance check I had to activate. Nothing.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat: