(Review Completed) [SP] Punishment Battalion

[LeeHunt]

Saved games Fixed in new version 1.01:
August 27th Note: Version 1.30 coming out mid September, recommend new testers wait till then
(DOWNLOAD TEMPORARILY REMOVED TO AWAIT NEW VERSION 1.30)

Hi Mathias, i was just in the process of uploading a new version, give it a try now (as of 12:50 pm New York Time on sunday the 12th).  Had a bad feeling somebody would try to download just at that moment! 

Anyway, I cut over 100 variable names and then reduced another 50 used in scripts to nil afterwards.  I tried saving and resuming my game over a dozen times and had zero crashes, so hopefully that fixes it for everyone else as well!!  (I'm praying so  )


Possible Questions for Betatesters:

Is the mission too hard? Too easy?

Did you want to see more or less of the characters/story? 

Was the size of the mission (map, # of bad guys) too big or just right or too small?

Anything you would like to see?  Thanks!

[THobson]

then you hear some birds or a dog barking in the street.  Completely different atmosphere.

[LeeHunt]

Yes, there are mostly static sounds.  These are mostly cows and crickets around the countryside, and wolves in some key places.  There are some dogs and birds in town but very few.  Some of the private beta reports i got were content with the sounds when asked, but I would like to add more the way Abandoned Armies had it once I get the scripts figured out (probably once my long overdue August vacation is over).  The problem is of course with the Object ID's and I'm trying to discover a decent solution (not just having a randomized sound appear every few minutes regardless of location, or only with certain animals based on distances from game logics etc).  But you raise a very good point, thankfully no atmosphere killing sounds at present, but not enough atmosphere-creating  sounds just yet... so more work cut out for me after vacation 

[THobson]

What is the issue with object IDs in ArmA? 

Apart from using them to kill a lot of buildings I mostly just used object IDs as a quick way of specifying a location.  You could instead use absolute coordinates.  Of course this would mean finding those coordinates first.  I did that by having a repeating radio trigger that was something like:
hint format["%1",getPos player]
or some such, my syntax is very rusty these days.  You get the idea anyway, just move the player around and activate the trigger to get his current coordinates.  This does raise the complication that the distance command did not work with absolute coordinates but it is simple enough to check the x and y coordinates separately.

On sounds - this is OFP now not ArmA:  I found that sound objects could not be created, moved or destroyed and also that after a some time they just stopped making their sounds.  It might be that ArmA is better than OFP.  Worth checking anyway.

[LeeHunt]

Creating the sound candy was the last task for me to finish in PB, then i saw the upcoming Project Beta and threw in sound objects instead and figured I could add this bonus later.  Mr. Peanut was helpful working through this, though i didn't quite finish.  I think the problem is I don't yet know how to store an array like the one of all the locations & sounds-- so it doesn't create a massive lag each time it runs the sound candy check.  That's my next job.  This is where I left off, as you can see its similar to the move atrocities script but ArmA uses NearestObject (you can't just throw in ID's): 



;Move Sound Candy by Lee Hunt, thanks to Mr. Peanut and Ofpec.com for the help! 
;Bbased on THobson's MoveTriggers in Abandoned Armies 1.40

; The locations are the objects the player wants to place sounds near
_Locations = [getpos player nearestObject 1304,getpos player nearestObject 4019,getpos player nearestObject 4054,getpos player nearestObject 4022]


;The messages are the different sounds to be played at each location object, and can and should use the same sound to avoid having too many
; triggers on the map.
_Messages = [chicken,chicken,cow,dog]

;Find out which location the player is closest to, _atrocity is used based on Abandoned Armies
_GL = "logic" createvehicle [0,0,0]

_GL setPos getpos (_Locations select 0)
_atrocity = 0
_dist = player distance _GL
_i = 0


;Find out which location the player is closest to, _atrocity is used based on Thobson's Abandoned Armies
#mainloop
_atrocity = -1
_dist = 1e20
_i = 0

#loopfindAtrocity
if ((player distance (_Locations select _i)) < _dist) then {_atrocity = _i;_dist = player distance (_Locations select _i)}
_i = _i + 1
if (_i < count _Locations) then {goto"loopfindAtrocity"}
if (_atrocity != -1) then {(_Messages select _atrocity) setpos getpos (_locations select _atrocity)}

~5
if (alive player) then {goto "mainloop"}
exit

[Wolfrug]

Decided to edit this to suit the whole "project Beta" thing

Package

Packaged just fine, as far as I could see.

Overview

Enjoyed the use of a quote. Made me smile.

Intro

Also good stuff. My graphics card is too slooooow to be able to load every new scene instantly, so I got to see at a lot of low LOD blocks for a couple of seconds at the start of every scene (same with outro). But oh well.

Briefing

Good stuff, generally. Nothing to complain about.

Mission

The start was nice, although it seems a bit weird how the explosion managed to take out specifically the guards, especially the ones in the back. Also, why did none of the guards have any weapons (unless the one AK-74 + mag found in the back of the truck is one of the guards')? I suppose just not to bathe the player in weapons right from the start, so it's all cool.

The first thing I did was take off to the American chopper-landing spot, and following the trail to the pilot himself (nice and RPG-like, likey). Note that I did this on foot since I didn't realise that you could steal the truck But that was all nice and well, anyway (couldn't've scaled that mountain with the truck as it were). Anyway, hired the pilot, drove off with the car, and got that other guy in the mountain pass. Note that the suicide bomber didn't manage to kill all the civilians, the guy with the dark shirt survived (although all bloody). Ah well. Got sniper rifle, drove back to the truck.
There was a biiig group of white-black soldiers close to the truck, but I just drove by them real fast-like into Eponia, where I took out the whole garrison there soldier-by-soldier (no reinforcements that I saw).

After that I stole all the weapons of the killed soldiers and drove up to the ? Resistance sign, where I met with the captain who told me of the cache of AKs (d'oh, I think, having just been there). Anyway, go and grab them, return them, and yes indeed, the AKs disappear from the trunk but the captain just runs away.

One note here: The Landrovers are the "trucks" of the RACS, consequently they're filled with phat loot -> lots of ammo, including M136 rounds. This also includes the police variants (which is just plain odd). Might want to consider removing the magazine cargo on all the police landrovers. Also, the crate contained four odd M4s -> considering the police force just wanted 12 AKs, one would think they could also want 8 AKs and then just grab the 4 M4s, or somesuch Point is, I mean, that there are four perfectly good assault rifles lying around in that crate. Maybe one old M16A2 or somesuch, but 4 M4s? I dunno...

Anyway, afterwards I carry on to Marco, get him and his pal and the directions to more places to go. I first head to the dead guys (lots of wolves howling - one lonely might be more effective), and then head straight south to Pablo's gang. I kill people on the way, and Pablo joins me happily, and I have a largish army with lots of equipment, including AT weaponry and the like, and that nice M2 truck as well. This time it's off to take out those AA units and get the promised American goodies, so it's off to the north again. Drivedrivedrive. For some reason there's no longer a radio option Also, the radio set up like in Abandoned Armies (random playing standard song) would be pretty cool as well, instead of just that one song.

The trip north is pretty eventless, and the resistance at the goal is not too dangerous at all, especially with the nice little Dragunov you've picked up. The Shilka and the BRDM are only guarded by one lone patrolman, and are easily taken out by me alone. MadMatt's effects = niiice and satisfying to see things go up in flames.

It may be at this point noted I hadn't seen a single case of anyone chasing me down, which was a bit boring. Even with my super-slow AI micro-management (yarr, stupid buggers) there was never apparently time for any reinforcements or the promised elite troops to arrive. Oh well. We drop Floyd off (that was kind of cool, seeing him run through the fog and rain into the underwash of the copter blades while keeping a distance). Anyway, the promised crates were there, and I spent the next 10 minutes or so loading everything into the truck (amazing how they gave us like 4 man-portable Stinger AA systems + missiles...pretty heavy-duty stuff that!), and then after having rearmed all my men with American weapons I headed off again.

Back to..Carmen, I believe? (the place north of Pablo's base, where you kill the SLA in the pub with the car outside). Here I ran into trouble though - 2 T72s and a BMP with an X amount of beret-clad soldiers running around came zooming into the rainy city, right at us! Luckily I had just saved, although it took manymany retries before I managed to kill all the tanks and soldiers. This was the one point I actually had some challenge before me, although most of it was due to poor visibility and wanting to do things myself without endangering my somewhat-stupid AI companions.

Eventually they were all burning wrecks and we continued on, this time to pick up Albert and Carla and assault the airbase. Carla we picked up nicely (very cool concept!), and Albert I immediately suspected something with his dialog. Hmm! Ah well. M-17 arrives, I've just saved before it and go through a couple of save points until I manage to shoot it down over the ocean with a Stinger, causing most of its cargo to drop into the sea. Mwahah. Wonder if any of them managed to swim to shore...anyway, I shoot the traitor in the back after him having tried "running" (which amounted to dismounting from the truck, magically carrying different weapons, and then just standing there like an eejit until I shot his face off). After this I continue on to the Airbase...and here's the big niggle.

I moved in with Carla, and as advertised she wasn't attacked. I merrily went around planting bombs at the various tanks, blowing them up and continuing further into the base. (Niggle "0" : no-one seems to mind her walking into the base, putting a satchel in plain daylight behind a tank, walking a couple of steps away and detonating it ^^)

Niggle 1: Since the player has this unique possibility of seeing the insides of the base through the eyes of this "spy", making things look good should be prioritized. Just having people standing in the middle of the field doing nothing or having those static guns sit entirely unprotected in the open is a bit...lazy-looking. Adding vegetation, sandbags or the like is generally a cool thing, methinks!

Niggle 2 (the big one): Carla can drive a tank! Yes she can. And there just happens to be an empty one close to the hangars. And, seeing as she's SetCaptived, she can merrily drive off with the tank, put manual fire on, and gun down the rest of the base. D'oh. I'm sad to say I used the tank to take out the rest of the base, entirely unmolested, before returning to my peeps (who were under attack, and managed to get their truck wasted, but somehow still survived with 0 casualities! Nice work, guys)

Anyway, after turning back to Number Uno, I drive into the decimated base (getting a nice airstrike on the way in - cool thought!), and find Beria. I elect to have him incarcerated. The nice thing to do, yes? And then...it's off.

I finish the rest of the objectives with the help of the tank, and it was, frankly, a bit TOO easy: First I rescued my girlfriend, then I single-handedly attacked the base with my tank, killing everyone inside. After a little while, the mission ended.

Debriefing

Don't really remember the debriefing, guess it wasn't too complicated

Outro

For some reason, the cutscene started playing twice O.o Don't know if it continued more times after that, but I didn't check. It was a nice cutscene though, explaining what happened to the characters afterwards! 

Summary

Atmosphere/story : Excellent! Loved it, quite a lot! Although did it have to rain THAT much? I mean...there's rain, and there's ridiculous...
Scripts/mechanics : No bad script errors or showstoppers, very professionally made! Except for the initial non-show of the elite reaction force (was it supposed to be the tanks? maybe they were just slow in that case!)
Cutscenes/voices/etc: Yay! Fully voiced! Alright, some small things to note here and there (for instance you didn't use the Say command very often, leaving people who were talking standing there with no lip movement), but overall very nice and very unique. Kudos to all your voice actors! Cutscenes were not amazing, but quite adequate

Gameplay : Also very excellent indeed, had a nice old time driving from place to place, picking people up, noticing the roadside events and the like. Although unfortunately the whole "resistance strike-hide-strike guerilla warfare!" thing didn't really manifest for me. I think this is partly due to the early availability of AT weapons, and the fact that tanks in ArmA can be taken out with one well-placed shot (instead of 3 to really-lots like in OFP. Tanks were naaasty then). Also, in Abandoned Armies the importance of your base was accentuated because you kept having to bring civilians and such back there -> in this mission you never really had the need to make a "base" for yourself, since all you needed was in the truck you drove around with. Also, there ultimately weren't that many enemies around. I'm not a very good ArmA player, I'll admit to that immediately, and the AI kills me very efficiently throughout...but overall I didn't actually get in all that many firefights I didn't know I'd win almost immediately. Maybe if I hadn't abused that tank...ah well. Also, I didn't do anything at night, despite the advice to do so. The AI enemy is even nastier at night, I've found 

It took me several days of off-time gaming to get through this mission, and I enjoyed every minute of it! I heartily commend you for it, hooraah! Just don't be afraid to up the difficulty a bit : more tanks and APCs (patrolling BRDMs and the like) and less weapons (especially the American dropoff -> consider limiting the Stingers to one or two [missiles, that is]). The Kamov was a nice challenge when it turned up, but I already had Stingers by then -> make it appear earlier as well to harass you, maybe? The Mi-17 could be changed to the PK variant, and then have it involved in fighting you after dropping off the parachutists : the PK gunner is not TOO accurate (but accurate enough to be scary) and he sits in a pretty heavy piece of machinery that isn't going to be easy to drop unless you have AA, and he can harass you while the paratroopers land. 

The odd end-game thing was...well, odd...but maybe that just happened to me! Dunno why. 

Anyway, thanks for this mission, a lot! Keep up the good work, mate.

Final score: 8.5/10 (for the various niggles mentioned above)

Wolfrug out.

[THobson]

Lee,
The use of nearestObject in
_Locations = [getpos player nearestObject ...
looks very odd.  I would check this part first.  It would not work like that in ofp.

Also just a little puzzled as to why you based this on my atrocity voiceover script and not my environmental sounds script.

[Planck]

Yes TH,

There are 3 flavours of nearestObject now.

The old one you know and love from OFP:

_myobject = nearestObject [player, "StreetLamp"]

and 2 others that are ArmA only:

_myobject = position player nearestObject 4567
Find object nearest to given position with given Visitor id.

and

_myobject = position player nearestObject "Building"
Find object nearest to given position with given type.


Planck

[THobson]

Okay.  I'll shut up.  I'm getting old

Is there still a range limitation on nearestObject ?

[Planck]

At the risk of highjacking this thread, I will briefly answer your question and hope I am forgiven.

The:

_myobject = position player nearestObject "Building"

flavour of the newer ArmA nearestObject command is indeed limited to 50m.

However, the other flavour:

_myobject = position player nearestObject 4567

will detect the object from any distance.

 


Planck

[LeeHunt]

Thanks Planck, for your comments here & before on the object ID problem before with Mr. Peanut-- still not figured out so please write here i need the help   

Wolfrug
Ok, still working on next version, but probably won't come out till early September so any other thoughts from anyone would be appreciated 

[Variable]

Playing the missions over the weekend, having fun! thanks for it Lee..

This is what I've found out thus far-

The guy (can't remember his name) that there are several hints that he is a traitor (lives in a fancy house, for example- nice touch) doesnt run off when the message says that he is not obbeying and running off. He just stands there doing nothing.

The other guy you recruit that freaks out and have emotional breakdown- he was the gunner of the 5T truck with MG when the message that says he snaps came. he just remained in the gunner position while dissapearing from my command interface.

When I drove the pilot to his extraction point the chopper was there, on the ground, with no crew manning it, with the supply crates next to it. I guess that's not how it is meant to be..

It says that Carla would remain in your team for 30 minutes. She has been in my team for more than an hour and a half by now...

General comments-
1. sometimes when there is talking going around (in the cases where there is no voice acting) I found that it hard to finish reading the whole sentences, would appreciate longer pauses so I would be able to finish reading (I'm not a native english speaker).

2. the Carla feature is great, but not that realistic. She can plant satchels under the nose of a squad and they will do nothing, not to say armour units. I got in with her to the Bagango arsenal base and planted satchels right next to the soldiers there. Needless to say that only the tower guards remained after the BOOMs. The russian mission makers OTK had a nice feature in one of their missions in which you play an undercover agent that plant satchels inside an enemy base- Although you were undercover, if someone saw you planting a satchel, your cover was blown. Maybe this script could be useful in Carla's respect?

3. The mission is great but not that challenging. more armoured patrols and more guards around the towns will add a lot to the challenge of this great mission.

Thanks for your mission and good luck with the last version!

[LCD]

started 2 play it nd ive got coupl of comments (somin like 39:P but whos counting )

1st heres wat i did up till now (hr n half of play... nd i got only into 1 firefight  )

mision start... i clear da truck from bodies get some arms (AK74 w/ 2 magz) drive all da way 2 da choper... get tracks.... try 2 walk downhill couple of times nd fall 2 death (cant belive da pilot got thro dere w/o snapling equipment) so i moved thro oder PB group... saw him explode got da oder d00d (joel) armed him w/ dragunov got 2 da choper decide 2 help him... take da UAZ nd move 2 da police pos (didnt see no enemies on da way) get some M16s 4 me nd my US friend... get da objective... it seems i got set 2 stop  nd da group refuses 2 folow me nymore i have 2 order em 2 move around... get 2 da tower pos kill da roadblock easily (2 easily) get 2 da shilka nd BDRM both seem unresponsive take em both out (my group took out da RPG soldier) nd here i saved... i need 2 go 2 work soonish

ok so ill start from package nd go on from der

Package

1) direct d/l link (i already got da addons) doesnt include readme
2) name of pbo file mises da .sara. part... i cant get it 2 show da mision w/o it

overview

1) missing border 4 da pic

intro

1) i think u said im walkin w/ my G/F in da beach... but its definetly not a woman dere
2) i get 2 see da player unit (a US soldier laying in da forest i think) b4 da intro ends

Brief

i think da whole brief need some rework 2 make it more gamish feelin instead of a outside of game thingy... ill list sugested changes

1) dont say mision bounderies... say de black areas r mined cant move thro em 
2) also u may wanna change da find friend n rescue g/f into 2 diffrent objectives
3) da objective 3 shud b rephrased... da whole win da game line is a turn off
4) i think u shud add a authors note section nd put all author noptes dere... keep da briefing more inside mision feeling
5) u shud probably have som1 2 teach u how 2 use da arty 1ce available... not have da notes premade b4 da soldier knows how 2 use it
6) da name of da player unit has underscore in it (robert_jordan) u can remove dat

mision

1) i already have da radio options (sleep/save) while im in truck at start of mision... i think u may wanna use da showradio command nd have it apear lil later (player findin radio on SLA soldier after explosions or somin)
2) it says da truck is wreck but i can still drive it (its ok tho )
3) i think da whole explosionsd nd truck movin cutscene (1st cutscene) shud b of 1 part... right now it goes in 3 parts... cutscene - back 2 player view - cutscene etc...
4) if da savegame part is fixed... u shud remove da savegame curuption hints
5) da cutscene in da pass (oder PB squad... civie suicide bomber) is near imposible 2 watch at night....
6) da civie from da PB doesnt aproach my group... he aproach me (didnt have a group yet)
7) if im wearing a uniform when bein in a PB... y isnd oder PB wearing uniforms too ?
8 ) i think da rest action (hate playin @ night w/o NVGs) shud have a black out black in effect... not only a skiptime thingy...
9)da road de PB batlion is clearing doesnt lead 2 pacamac (im prety sure dey told em 2 clear da road 2 pacamac)
10) it cud b cool 2 have da tracks 2 pilot apear 1 by 1 (u have 2 folow da tracks 2 make next 1 apear) ull have 2 change da route tho... as player cant climb da mountain down
11) i didnt realy check (it was night) but dere shud b a dead crew in da choper or near it... i didnt see em
12) mebe have a UAZ also on da oder PB squad site (how did dey get dere 2 clear da road when deres no close base at all ?
13) lots of da text in pilot cabin is 2 fast 2 read... all da long 1s i mean... its disapears lots faster dan da voice...
14) were did da pilot droped his AR ? he seems 2 carry 2 magz nd only a handgun ?
15) also if u put some dead pilots in da choper... dey shud 2 have ARs
16) @ dis point i was thinkin... will it ever stop rainin ?
17) da sound of radio in cars is 2 low... i think u cud raise da volume lil bit (or add action 2 raise it)
18 ) have more dan 1 radio song... use random command... nd array dat includes all radio songz....
19) in da cop position also some of da text is 2 fast 2 read... some vioce actin wud b also nice
20) it seems da pilot has a selectweapon command on ? i gave him rifle nd he still walked around w/ handgun...
21) it seems im ranked as major... stil havnt join da resistance group nd im am major  u cud rank me as pvt or corp nd use selectleader 2 keep me leader at all timez
22) btw on meetin da pilot i told him im w/ da resistance... I cant qualify as resistance when i did nothing yet
23) 1 of da soldiers in da roadblock (near radio1) was standin on da fire... it seems 2 disable him shotin (arma bug) u cud try 2 move him from dere...
24) around here i noticed dat da group doesnt follow me (bb4 engagin i told em 2 return 2 formation....) but follow da pilot... i think its conected 2 da cop cutscene after wich i had stop writen over my icon in da group command menu... u shud remove da stop from da player
25) it seems dat at some point da pilot nd joel were set 2 captives... cuz i just sent em 2 da shilka nd dey killed da RPG man quite easily
26) i got da msg of "SLA has a radio tower nd shilka on dis island" after i killed da shilka... b4 killin da BDRM
27)i sugest usin more wav2lip (i think u do dat on most cases) cuz right now it doesnt hapen when i talk 2 da pilot after destroin da shilka n BDRM
28) u shud have an objective nd a link 2 da extraction point of da pilot
29) da BDRM nd shilka r very inresponsive... mebe have some group dere nd have dam both shotin at me

nywayz gonna continue l8r

LCD OUT

p.s u realy shud reply 2 my PM bout da baloper reel

[megz]

Intro
No problems, a longer intro would be nicer.

Mission

Excited about this one, helped the pilot and got the supplies, loaded them all into my civi ural so its a mobile armory, got the red pickup for the cops and deliverd it then i met marco - in this cutscene i couldn't hear what they was sayin. Also controlling the AI is something of an issue, i issue commands and they don't respond, i often have to repeat my command a few times or get them to do something else. went to el sordo and there all dead, so took the NVGs and headed towards pablo, thought i'd take out the troops at carmen so i park the ural some distance away the the 3 of us head for carmen. A t72 comes and we take it out, then i save, big mistake, a load of spec ops arrive, another t72 and a bmp2 along with some boots. Shit. Still playin and tryin to take these guys out without anyone in my section dyin - but again the ai refuses to do what i ask and are gettin wasted, i could retreat but i dont want to leave my armory and as soon as i get in it and finally get the ai to the bmp or t72 has spotted me and im dead. Managed to get the lads back to tabngo or watever its called, tryin to get my truck back will let u know how its goin...

[Variable]

a few more comments:

The patrolling choppers crash into the ground. they both crashed in a difference of 1 minute, so i think maybe some script that kicked in made them crash?

The attack on bagango arsenal- I wasn't sure (again, because the subtitles went on too fast for me) if the policemen attacked the arsenal or the city itself. anyway, I attacked the arsenal and there was no sign for the policemen. I saw a couple of police cars right next to the arsenal's crossroad, but saw no policemen or any signs of combat (i attacked from the SW), no bodies no anything.

Floyd extraction- when i got the to the extraction point there was a blackhawk right there on the ground, engine off, no crew, and the supply crate right next to it. it gave the message about Floyd though and he was released from my command and just stood there. I got the message about the mortar but i didn't find the mortar itself. to be hones, i forgot about it but i don't remember seeing it in the gear menu.

The attack on the airbase was way too easy as well, I simply flanked from the lighthouse and crossed the water with the BRDMs, before crossing the water, i fired about 3 missiles on the static mg, and two tanks that came from the west., then got in with the brdm, cleared the infantry and got Beria.

The outro- it showed the outro but then when it said wait 30 seconds for your score... it simply started the intro all over again. I happened twice, in the first time i shot Beria and in the second I arrested him.