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[Mad_Cheese]

Hi SavedByGrace,

There's no way I could be offended, big thanks for taking the time and giving so detailed constructive feedback! The tougher the better, it's my first mission and I have lots to learn.

Everything you mentioned makes perfect sense to me and I will have a good time working on those ideas.

The tusk not firing warning shots surpises me, I did it with Unitplay and it never failed. Normally the problem is that one time out of ten the AI in the car showing some strange behaviour.

The last vehicle (MK19 HMMWV) has always been a problem, depending on how the player drives it might just crash into the MTVR, thats why i recorded its path way behind and closer to the edge of the road. I was about to remove it many times but I thought it would be weird to have the must vulnerable vehicle in the end of a convoy. I had problems to get satisfying results for the MK19 HMMWV  without Unitplay and didn't want to give the Player something like an LAV because it's too much firepower.
Also I didn't want to have an AI driver in the MTVR so I could keep the player busy. I will have to think that through again.

The issues with empty objects are related to my lack of skill, I will continue to search for solutions. I don't know how to have a script copy them and place them later yet, will find out about that. So far I had problems even just deleting empty objects.

One last thing, I did mention SaOk's work HERE but it reminds me I have to put credits in the actual mission itself.

Thanks again for all this great input.

Cheese

[SaOk]

Thats fine, those my trenches are anyway quite simple. I didnt put much effort in those.

A new play through with my new computer specs was much better. Now the ambush is also very smooth (it seem to just CPU heavy). As new small bug, I noticed that some titletext flashes very quickly after collecting evidence, but I cant read what it says. Also the UAV crashed again, but this time much later. Looks like it looses his skills to fly when player begin to use it. Should I fly it somehow myself or is that a bug?

[Denz]

Tested on v1.60; Veteran difficulty. No addons or mods loaded.
First of all the mission pbo should be in a folder with a readme included.

Nice on load screen? Is that a BIS image or did you take it? It's a great looking shot.

Briefing
Had to press ESC to get the briefing to function
Typos:
"there s a high" > there's --or-- there is
"voulnerable" > vulnerable

Mission
You should add a saveGame following the cutscene so the player doesn't have to watch it again if killed beforehand. Opted for the "no teamswitch" option and took an M110 TWS which proved very handy later on.
Typo:
"got is hands up" > his
After taking care of the first task - destroying the arms cache (how we knew it was there was a mystery) I followed the tank up until the point where it just stopped. Debussed on own initiative, took out two guys and ordered the rest to disembark where we took care of a couple more OPFOR before getting a hint about a warlord. No task or further information was given. Rather accidently one of my squad killed the warlord and I collected the evidence. Evidence of what I don't know  
After receiving the message about defending the crossroad I moved my team up and arranged them around the area. Placed two of my guys in the static HMGs  and ordered the medic to hide in a covered position - I always seem to get the poor blighters killed. Defending the position proved to be quite a fight with several armoured vehicles. Here the fact that I had grabbed a rifle with thermal sights proved very fortuitous as the smoke from the burning armour obscured the roadway.
After successfully defending crossroad, I moved everyone back to the truck- apart from my no.6 who got stuck on the sandbags (I erm blew him up to make my life easier ).
Following the task list, I then mounted everyone in the truck and drove to the airfield, debussed and got everyone in the chinook then nothing. On a side note you need to fill all the slots in the chinook so that the players team doesn't take up co-pilot and gunners seats just for the sake of appearance. I can only presume that the rest of the convoy was needed for the mission to complete.
Exited the mission at this point.

Overall
Well apart from the ending not working I thought this was a pretty decent foundation for a mission. A good start had been made with regard to realistic detail but more needs to be done for example, the ordering of your squad to investigate the arms cache as well as the whole task about the warlord and his evidence. If you want a realistic edge to your mission then think through the procedure of ordering units to accomplish certain tasks. As it stands, the whole thing about leaving the combat zone doesn't quite fit with the scenario - maybe they are heading to the airfield prior to transferring to the main airbase for the flight home or to Germany or wherever.
The difficulty of the objectives was balanced curving up to the difficult battle at the crossroad. You do need to look at the updating of information particularly about the warlord and where this fits in with the mission overall. But like I said it's a good start.

[Mad_Cheese]

Hey,

I hope you are all having a merry merry christmas!

I just uploaded Version 3.0.

I took time and made use of all the feedback and ideas you gave and it makes a huge difference indeed. I also fixed and added a lot of other things.

I changed the storyline a bit, kind of an attempt to justify the geared up team. At one point I had them all as "soldier light" class but that didn't really feel nice so now the guys don't get to go home yet, they are just transferred to Feruz Abad. : )

The UAV had to go, it was overkill anyways and responsible for most of the lag and some script errors.

I hope the mission feels more immersive now and I also hope that the objectives are always clear. There's something that bugs me about the warlord and I'm curious to see how that plays out.

Once again the mandatory thanks to you guys. Great great feedback and ideas!

Off to complete Operation Lion now.

[SaOk]

Hi and thanks, have a nice holiday time too.

I like much the changes and new cutscenes. The mission feels much better and also smoother now. That UAV was definitely unneeded.

Clearing the first task area is now much more interesting, the cutscenes improve the feeling nicely and all the music fitted in great. Only flaws are the warlord task, which could have some detailed radiochatting instead of suddent hint message, also the extraction didnt work on my try - the UH60 flew away when I was closing the airfield main gate and I couldnt end the mission. As small flaw the intro cut the sound badly, you could make it smoother with:

Code:

5 fadeMusic 0;
5 fadeSound 0;
sleep 5;
//your code to end the cutscene

Overally the mission is getting in great shape. Of course, there could always be more tasks. E.g. the final task to defend could be longer with multiple stages (e.g. defend crossroad then move to trenches to hold the airfield). It partly feels bad to leave the show so soon.

[Mad_Cheese]

Oh jeez... the extraction not working is bad news. it had never happened to me when testing and just yesterday right after i read your post - bam! the chopper took off and just hovered 20m over the ground.   

I am actually working on another task where the player gets to decide if he wants to assist the defense of the airfield. Leaving always feels like "okay guys, have fun being overrun and that, but we would rather grab a cup of coffee in Feruz!" : ]

did you run into the hidden task (give if you pick up intel in the warlord house)?

[SaOk]

I missed that intel document. Going to check that on next try.

Chopper AI can be annoying. I also had problems to keep one chopper on ground in my campaign (2nd mission intro) after BIS made some changes to the game. I use this command (pilot could also be "careless" if that helps):

Code:

choppername land "LAND";

[Mad_Cheese]

I think I got it now.

Anyways it's a no-go for now, I will upload a corrected version asap. sorry for this.

[Mad_Cheese]

Happy new year everybody, all the best for 2k12!

I uploaded a new version with a new finale, a few other news and fixes as well as (drumroll) a foolproof extraction. 

Thanks again for all the help!!!!

Version 1.6 presented me with a couple of weird issues too but I hope I fixed most of them.

[Undeceived]

Hello Mad_Cheese, I played your mission and have a bit of feedback for you.

Overall I can say that I have mixtured feelings after playing your mission. The first part (the convoy) was absolutely fantastic, you had some great ideas (the car approaching, the convoy moving around, the Humvee giving cover from the hill, etc.) and I was absolutely immersed in the great atmosphere you produced with the tasks, the music and the sounds. Good job!

Unfortunately the second part of the mission was something I really didn't like at all because it was way too difficult. I'm talking especially about the second Taktistani wave at the northern end of the airport. Already at the first attacking wave in the city I thought: "Ok, what will this bring... ", but the Bradley was a great help destroying those enemy tanks, so it was ok. I even would be able to take on more enemies, as at the second try (first one was a mess) I positioned all of my soldiers in buildings / on rooftops. It worked quite well and if you can assure that the Bradley will be there every time, then you could send some more enemy troops. That about the first attack wave.

Well, the second one was just a player's nightmare. I don't know how many times I had to reload but it I think it was about 20-30 times. It took me more than 2 hours to complete this part of the mission. It's so frustrating that:

1. you're instantly shot by every enemy around when you fire one AT rocket, so the only thing you can do is to hide behind those big sand walls

2. the friendly AI is what it sometimes is: stupid and useless. At the end of those two hours my group was the only friendly unit that had survived, everyone else of the US guys were dead. And this only because I had sent them behind the walls for them not to die in their stupidness! What I did was to switch to one after the other (thanks God I choose the switch-mode in the beginning of the mission) and peak behind corners and shoot some enemies until them all shot back - then I switched to the next of my unit and repeated the same over, over, over and over again...

3. friendly armor didn't give a shit that the infantry had to deal by themselfes against so (too) many enemy tanks. And after the end of the battle what did I have to see? An Abrams near the airport hangars doing nothing to help, just standing there... Other than that a Bradley, which stood somewhere at the right flank and did nothing, even though hordes of enemy infantry were in his line of fire. You might want to revise the armor assistance. I think that it might help a lot. Another solution would be to reduce the number of enemy tanks, but you have to check out what is the best to do.




Ok, now I have let out the frustration and we can go to the bug report.

Mission:

- The subtitles in general were way too short. I would even dare to say that even native English speakers would have too try to read very fast in order to get all information. And beside that: Why aren't you using normal subtitles instead of those RscTitles (I forgot the name of it...)?

- In the truck at the beginning there was MAAWS ammo but no launcher.

- After a restart because of death the group embarked the truck, but this time a very very dense fog came up right after everyone was in the truck. It was so dense that visibility was = 0 so it had to be a bug. So I restarted again, but it came again too. Only after I got out of the mission (abandoned) and went in the main menu and restarted the mission again, the fog didn't come back... No idea what caused this.

- When I reached the four compounds the first time, the task came in the briefing, but no markers showing the compounds appeared. Second time worked then.

- I spotted a spelling mistake after the first attack wave of the TAK army: "Get to tmy HQ-tent"

- One thing I asked myself while my group was extraced with the Black Hawk: How can we just fly around if AA is around?! (reason for the Apache to leave - which also would have been a great help at the airfield... )

- At the final fight at the airfield I received the order to go back to the officer's tent, but there were still approx. a dozen of enemy infantry attacking our position and (if I remember correctly, not sure) even a tank or a APC was around... Not sure about the vehicle though.

- On the way to the warlord's house suddenly there was a terrible lag (probably the one you mentioned in the ReadMe) and this script error appeared: (link)


Conclusion:

As I said, the first part with the convoy was VERY good and I also liked the part where the Humvee was destroyed and the player was given the task to kill the war lord. Great! The first attack of the enemy was ok too (with the Bradley helping).
You might want to improve the second attack though. It simply was too hard with too many enemy tanks (and I wouldn't consider myself as a n00b) without sufficient armor assistance and if I remember correctly, there were only one, two, no more than three AT units (apart from my groups AT guys).


It was hard and some times I looked around in my room, searching for things that I could destroy in my rage, but all in all (with that last part improved) it is a very good mission, which I would recommend and also play again! Thanks for your work!



EDIT:

I still should add that the frustration is not mainly your fault. It's the general AI in Arma that (I even would dare to say) is uncapable to handle situations like this one. It really is sad.

[Mad_Cheese]

Thanks Undeceived for your report! Another encouraging read with awesome input.

First off, I will make all titletexts fade later and fix the mistakes you spotted.

Well, the experience you had on the last task does not sound like fun at all. It’s not meant to be like that and probably I got lost in my perspective. Anyways, I’m really glad you hung in there and I will make an effort to balance that way better. To be honest I prevented the tanks from entering too early as they tended mess up the drama (same goes for the apache). Not the best way to go, I admit. I need to work that task a lot and I will try to find a balance of enemy numbers/skill, improve the ‘story’ and make it more fun to beat.
I also hesitated before, but I am convinced now that I need to make a condition counting opfor units before ending the final task.

What really puzzles me are the rather serious bugs you encountered with the fog, the missing markers and the script error. Curious to find out what those are related to. Really, that fog thing is extra weird!

Danke vielmals fuer dein Feedback!!

PS:

As for the first attack at the crossroad, I suppose a player doesn’t bother to set up the SPG9 and the mini DSHKM in addition to the regular DSHKM? If one does so, the defense becomes proper strong but it probably doesn’t come to mind. I will fix that.

Now, a question of mine: I'm wondering, since the airfield defense was added later, should I make the first attack more insurgency based with less tanks? At the moments the two attacks are somewhat alike and honestly if one looks at the map it's a bit unrealistic that the first wave of tanks would even get to that point. Insurgent jeeps and maybe one armored vehicle could come out of a believable hide for an attack.

[SaOk]

I got stucked with 3.1 - cant find the warlord or identify him. I´ve been checking all enemy bodies in big radius, but cant find the right. :S Could he be hiding in some other building?

[Mad_Cheese]

oh good lord. i apoplogize for all these friggin showstoppers.

i guess he ran away, even though i 'thought' i prevented him to run further away from his regular position than 15m.

if you use lost key, his unit-name is just 'warlord'. maybe you can kill and setpos him to where he used to be?

apologies once again SaOk, i really appreciate you taking the time over and over again, this should not happen. i almost have a new version ready though, i will solve this bug for sure before posting it.

[SaOk]

Nope, things like that happen. In one version of my "Fly Like an Eagle"-ArmA1mission the POWs acted same way. Player was suppose to rescue them from cage, but they were already gone when player arrived to the scene.

I dont use that lost key (yet). I prefer to keep the addons low when creating missions to make usure there isnt any suprises when releasing stuff.

But I give a new try for this when the new version is up.

[Mad_Cheese]

I uploaded Version 3.2.

All the feedback is incorporated and I improved a lot of other stuff. Especially the final task is now more developed and balanced.

I spent a lot of time before uploading a new version and i really hope it's bug free now, maybe I can make this version a 'release'.