(Review Completed) [SP] Operation Night Owl

[smoke52]

Heres my second map for ArmA. I made this one while I was making my first mission and was going to make a mini campaign with three missions, but I kinda made the missions without thinking of a linking story and made whatever came to me at the time. Maybe if I make the third mission I will connect them all somehow, but as it stands they are seperate for now.

    * A little bit about the mission itself
In this mission you take control of one elite Special Forces member sent in to infiltrate the Pita heliport and destroy an armored column. The SLA have just taken it over and havent had time to set up barricades, so now is the time to strike! Two attack strike helicopters will launch from the U.S.S. Coronado and support you with missile strikes. If you get into trouble a blackhawk helicopter will be standing by to extract you.

    * What role the player will have
Lone wolf special forces member

    * Single Player or Multiplayer (and if MP, which type)
single player only

    * Which island
Sahrani

   * Version of ArmA required
1.05+  

    * Size of zip file
4.37meg

    * Any specific points you want people to consider
-mainly the balance/ease factor of the mission.
-any bugs *

* I know about the error when calling for extraction with the quickmap for the first time. it doesnt affect anything.

    * Full details of any addons
it will need an addon from mapfact.net, I've included it in the .rar file. (Map_MISC addon)

download v1.1.0 link: http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=1708

v1.1.0 changes
============
-missile script updated to mando_missile v2.2 *
-Intro changes
-Overview picture changed
-Briefing changes
-Patrol route changes/additions
-UAZ Patrol jeep added
-Score fixed
-Helicopters at the Pita heliport are now unlocked, but have no fuel
-Less objects
-Added more savegame triggers
-Made some scripts for efficiency
-added weapons selection
-fixed helicopter from not taking off and patrolling area
-other minor tweaks and fixes

*Big Thanks to Mandoble for taking the time to update his script on my map, heres what he changed:

Changes:
- Removed all scripts related to OLD laser attack system.
- Removed the two triggers of launchers in position, 1 is enough now as they will attack by their own to your targets
- Added four radio triggers to activate/deactivate each launcher so you may administrate better their missiles (8 each)
- Added launchers_in_position.sqs executed when launchers reach the attack area, this activates also the 4 radio commands.
- Added mando_javelin_air.sqs, powerfull enough to kill both big hangars with a single hit and any other structure, tank, etc.
- Changed init.sqs to add the targeting system for both choppers
re positioned the choppers so they dont fire so close to the targets and targets cannot attack them.
- Included mando missile v2.2b

The procedure to order an attack is as follows:
- Use the radio to activate the desired attack helicopter
- Aim with the laser and activate it
- Use the action to transmit the target
- Keep the laser over the target till missile hits it
- Move to the laser to next target and so on.

If you deactivate the laser, next time you activate it you will need to transmit the target again.

OFPEC Download

[Cheetah]

Operation Night Owl - Veteran, 1.08

Package
Please include some advertising pictures. Screenshots which show some of the action or special features of this mission to be posted on the frontpage, and a smaller image to be posted with the review. Check Fida'i for good examples. The screenshot should be big, the other picture 256x256 px.

Overview
Overview seems missing. There is no picture, no text.

Intro
cam.sqs not found. So I had to skip the intro as I was swimming and the camera wouldn't play.

Briefing
None. Briefing is missing.

Mission
HousePatrol.sqf not found. So the mission is empty with everything not working.

Possible problem: did you save the mission in the editor, but with a new name and forgot to put all the files into this newly created mission? As saving a mission won't automatically place all the files in the new mission folder.

[Rellikki]

Just tested it. I also have samekind of feedback as Cheetah did. The mission really needs more work because of those errors and missing overview and briefing. Also, give the player some NV goggles because I couldn't see a thing in the mission without them.

[smoke52]

sorry guys...i changed the name of the map and im positive i copied the scripts to the new folder before i exported to single player, but i guess i didnt 

ill get some screens and stuff for you too. also im aware of the extra spaces in the briefing and i will change the overview picture.

* updated the first post to the proper working copy.

edit: heres some screens:

http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59325


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59326


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59327


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59328


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59329


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59330


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59331


http://www.myimagehosting.com/show.php?u=87LAqNu&i=59332

[Cheetah]

Operation Night Owl 1.0 - Veteran, 1.08

Package
Same.

Overview
Picture isn't unique, would be good if it was.

Intro
The zoom in isn't fluent, it shocks. You could add a bit of text, where are we, maybe a voice telling what is going on.

Like the voices towards the end. Would be good if you wouldn't use the constant camera. Instead, let it commit a new camera point at once. So setPrepareCommit (something like that) set to 0.

Briefing
Please make a few paragraphs and I miss a weapon selection.

Like the information you give to the player, an overall situation report would be good. Why do we need to destroy the tanks? Why do the SLA have the airfield etc.

Mission
Including several autosaves would be cool. Don't know if the quickmap is really needed here, it brings up an error and until that can be fixed I'd say, leave it out.

Had to change my controls in order to be able to use "T", was "switch weapon" for me. Maybe you could use another key? Firing the laser gun could be enough?

The patrols are quite stupid, I suggest not having them patrol in the too dark areas near the coast. Let them patrol the edges of the light areas of the airfield, maybe an UAZ MG to patrol other parts. There seem to be enemies in aware mode, running near the tanks?

Can't get the Hellfires to hit firing the laser from the north of Jg33 (at the marker's position). Don't know where they hit, I think a mountain a kilometer away.

Tried getting inside a chopper in order to blow the tanks, it's locked. Never really like that, why not remove its fuel? Good for realism.
Stopped with the mission as I couldn't get the tanks to blow up, that is from multiple other positions kilometers away to very close - nothing worked. Please look into this.

[smoke52]

thank you very much, i will look into your suggestions.

in the intro i wanted to make a fly-through-the-area look, but i will make it jump to the last position. for the weapon selection i wanted to limit the player to that m4a1sd. what gun suggestions would you like to see?

also in the first area that you need to get past, i put a different weapon to use inside the house hint hint

i have autosaves when you complete objectives, but now that you mention it i can think of a couple more spots to add savegames.

the quickmap is for calling an extraction helicopter. you didnt get far enough to use it.

the missile script is mandobles "mando.missile" script, so im not sure how to change what button to press, but i will look at the script. are there any button preferences?

yeah you need to be around the gas station near the hangers to get the missiles to correctly hit, i will make a marker in the briefing for it. if i can i will see if i could change position of a heli so it hits from more positions.

[Rellikki]

Overview
The overview is fine apart from the picture. You should change it to an one from the mission.

Intro
I liked it. Nice custom sounds and voices. At the end of the intro, you should give it a fading out
before it ends.

Briefing
Good briefing. Your briefings are always realistic and gives a lot of useful information.
Some spelling mistakes:
hanger -> hangar
hangers -> hangars

Mission
I first headed towards the base in south-west of the village to see if there's anything interesting.
Didn't find anything, so I then headed for the airfield. I crawled from under the fence in the southern
end of the airfield and shot one lone guard in front of a building. I then crawled next to the fuel
station in the south where I could get a clear view of all the armor. Then I started targeting them
and reported them for the AH1's. This was really exciting. After destroying the armor, I saw some
enemy soldiers trying to flank me from both sides. Died once at this point but I dealed with them
after the second try. I had to change the chopper via radio at this point and then I targeted
one of the hangars and it blew up. It was one hell-of-an explosion.
(By the way, were you aware that you placed an american repair truck in the hangar instead of
SLA?)
I left the airfield from the same way as I came there and then I got the note about my boat being
discovered. I then headed for the town and shot one patrol on the road. I found a Sedan and drived
along the road to the west with it. I then saw the glowing thing on the ground and turned right from
there. I found a bug at this point - Every time you disembark the car, the car gets one additional
"Quick map" action. So if you'd disembark the car 5 times, there would be 5 "Quick map" actions on the
car's action menu.
I used the radio to call the excraction and got one pretty long error about some description.ext issue.
It didn't stop me from completing the mission though. I shot the Especas patrol heading towards me.
Then the chopper came, I threw the green smoke, boarded the chopper and mission got completed.

Debriefing
Nothing wrong here. I got two red X's at the score though. Weird. Completed the mission with 11
infantry kills and with duration of 21 minutes.

Summary
I really respect your work. I have enjoyed all the missions you have made so far and this was also
a very good mission. Really different from all some other ones. You need to make more! All you need
to do is to fix those things I reported and this will be a perfect mission.

[smoke52]

i know i will fix the overview pic  ill add the fading to the intro aswell and the spelling is fixed

thanks for the mission info. the repair truck is now SLA. i have a few questions 

did you find the sniper rifle in the second floor of the house at the first camp? is it useful or are silenced weapons better to use?

did you blow up the buildings the tanks were in? one is at the start and the other spot is where the intro shows two trucks coming down the road before it flys over to the tank column. those two buildings with the two tanks in them are the targets of opportunity. should i point them out or leave it up to the player to find out?

also you can go and kill the patrol that discovers your boat and still extract the boat way if you feeling more rambo'ish, hehe.

as for the quickmap bug, they arent my scripts and im not good at scripting, so ill have to ask for some help. i tried the quickmap bug myself and i think using the quickmap makes the double go away, but if i can figure out how to use the updated script made by sixth sense then it may not be an issue. i know about the radio call error and it cant be fixed either unless i update the script to the sixth sense update.

the score is fixed now, i used addscore before until i found out it was MP only so i changed it all to addrating now.

again thanks Rellikki i appreciate your feedback. i will have to think up some more mission ideas, right now im clueless what to do next but i think i will figure out something.

[Rellikki]

did you find the sniper rifle in the second floor of the house at the first camp? is it useful or are silenced weapons better to use?

Didn't find the sniper rifle, but I think silenced weapons are better to use since the place is crawling of enemies after blowing up the targets.

did you blow up the buildings the tanks were in? one is at the start and the other spot is where the intro shows two trucks coming down the road before it flys over to the tank column. those two buildings with the two tanks in them are the targets of opportunity. should i point them out or leave it up to the player to find out?

I tried to laser it before looking for the car, but nothing happened. Must have run out of bombs maybe. You should leave it up to the player to find out, since it's pointed out in the briefing.

[smoke52]

ok cool, i changed the weapon to a silenced SLA weapon (AKS74UN) and made a weapon selection before you start the mission, but with only sniper rifles and silenced weapons, so the player is still limited.

also theres satchel charges in the ammo crates that are spread out near the two repair depots and in the crates inside the depots, you are supposed to use those instead of the heli's missiles

another thing...for anyone that wants to answer i have a question; Im thinking of finding some good gun addons to give the player more choices of weapons in the mission, good idea or not? any addon suggestions?

[Mandoble]

Laser Designator with MMA v2.2. Hope this help you with your chopper attack, just check init.sqs, that's all you need.

[smoke52]

awesome thanks alot!

[Mandoble]

You should consider the following, the launcher should be heading towards the area where the targets are, if angle deviation is too big, the missile may lose its track. You may also play with missile profile parameters until you get exactly the kind of shot your are looking for. In the example mission, the missile is fired upwards (40 degrees or so), climbs to 100m above sea level and flies towards the target, when closer than 500m, it guides by active seeker, diving on the target and destroying it. I selected this profile for the example because the chopper is quite low (10m above water) and behind hills, so this ensures that the firing unit will keep undetected and the missile will be able to "jump" over up to 100m hills while it is not closer than 500m to the target, but may prefer a direct aproach having the launcher at some height, so the missile is heading directly for the hit from the beginning.

[smoke52]

thanks for the info mandoble

my mission is updated to the new laser intro you provided. i had to remove a chopper but the problem im running into now is the missile doesnt kill the tank. even with a direct hit! im fooling around with the mando_missilehead1a.sqf to change the warhead type to hellfires but when it fires the heli crashes 

the heli is over the ocean (fly height 20) and theres no mountains in the way, but i like that the missile fires upwards then comes down on the target like a real hellfire missile would. i made sure the launcher is moving towards the targets as well.

what file is the missile profile parameters in? are they the mando_missilehead files?

[Mandoble]

The missile profile in your case is in mando_javelin_air.sqs (there is also configured which warhead, smoke and launch effects script will use the missile, as well as missile body object class). The warhead used in my example is "mando_missiles\warheads\mando_missileheadat.sqf", which is a "weak" one based on the ArmA javelin explosion, it is still powerfull enough to disable or destroy a T72. If you want a BIG explosion, use "mando_missiles\warheads\mando_missilehead2a.sqf".

But warhead script is not the only parameter related to lethality, _boomrange (in mando_javelin_air.sqs) is also important, it determines the maximum range to target in meters to detonate the warhead. In the mission example it is set to 0, try increasing it at bit: 5.

Also, to ensure your chopper will not hit its own missile when firing while moving, you may adjust _pos = [0,6,-2]; in the init.sqs. It is the position relative to launcher where the missile will be spawned, you may change it by _pos = [3,6,-2]; so the missile will be spawned 3m to the right of the chopper in first shot, 3 meters to the left in next shot, 3 meters to the right in next shot, and so on.

EDIT: LOL, forgot a small detail, change

Code: [Select]

[_disp, _posunit, _ttype, _quantity, _minrange, _maxrange, _rof, _pos, _scan, _mink, _enemies, false, false, true, true]exec"mando_javelin_air.sqs";
by

Code: [Select]

[_disp, _posunit, _ttype, _quantity, _minrange, _maxrange, _rof, _pos, _scan, _mink, _enemies, false, true, true, true]exec"mando_javelin_air.sqs";
in your init.sqs

I did configure the chopper like an "all-directions" launcher, but it should be a "fixed-direction" launcher, so the missile is always fired in the direction where the chopper is pointing at (yep, is the third parameter starting by the end  )