[CAMP/A2CO] Chasing Grim Reaper (Review complete)

[aLlamaWithARifle]

Regards to the airstrike, it did work fine for me running without ACE mod. Except it also worked without the laser designator, I just pressed the radio button and it called an airstrike where I was pointing.

[SaOk]

It seems the module bugs mostly only when spotting moving targets with laser designator. If the plane misses right flightplan to fly over twice. Then it just dissapears. With ACE2 the AI is different with larger spotting range. That maybe affects why the module bugs more often with that.

[aLlamaWithARifle]

Onto mission 2, nice to see my weaponry carrying over that's a nice touch

Once again both intro and briefing are good nothing I haven't mentioned already.

I boarded my men into a humvee and we set off to find the crash site on my way there I was told to clear the cross roads as a secondary objective which was easy enough.

This mission was fairly laggy for me, maybe look to give an fps boost if possible, I'm running on a fairly high spec computer but at times found this mission difficult to run.

Also I keep seeing lit fires all over the place and can't help but think that the place is hot enough as it is and maybe the fires aren't all that necessary.

Other then that the mission ran through without any other problems, no real suggestions here.

Mission 3

Intro and briefing are once again good, clear and precise. I took my team and followed up the road, took out a couple of guys on the hill side and on the town and then a fade out and I all of a sudden jumped on top of the hill despite not being any where near there. Maybe in the briefing suggest that I take that route or something so it seems like less of a jump.

After that we continued onto the town with a few smallish engagements and then once again I make a big leap for the next cut scene. Maybe a shot that shows where I went to would be nice since I lose my bearings slightly and wasn't sure where I am in relation to where I was.

I do like the attention to detail with all the animals, civilians and cars. Not sure if they are your own placement or by one of the modules but either way it does make the place feel alive.

I get told to hold the area and make sure the SUV doesn't get blown up, this is a nice fight although at the beginning I keep getting blown up not sure if it was enemy grenades or enemy mortar fire or something but the area seemed to just get shelled so for the first minute or two I held back and then I went to join the fight. I like the use of cover here, vehicles turned on their side, a nice little entrenched position.

Also liked the mortar option as well as when the A10 flew by, were definitely nice touches.

Outro is good, would like to see a few more animations used on the men. As well as maybe when the engineers are at the SUV maybe make one do a heal animation so it looks like he's fiddling with the car before he says that he has secured the journal.

Mission 4

Not got round to playing it yet but the intro was fairly brilliant I thought  , nice use of music and nice use of disabling the sound. There were some excellent camera shots in here as well. It's normally quite tough to make a good action sequence but you've definitely pulled it off in this intro.

Will update when I get round to playing the next mission. 

[SaOk]

Thank you for more great feedback,

For some reason that 2nd mission is quite heavy. I will try work on it. Maybe you are right with the fires if those take much CPU load. I remove the campfires, put few without fire. And also make the mountain fires maybe burn only when player is more near. I could also try to tweak it in other ways. Still the Feruz Abad town is stuttering for me even without the mission.

That hill cutscene in 3rd mission is following the orginal story script. I add more time to the fade out. So it would feel that more time have passed (maybe I could also include some footsteps to make it sound that player is going there).

I will add that extra scene to that Bastam cutscene.

The animals, civilians and cars (including traffic in second mission) are all spawned from my own ambient scripts. BIS modules felt so heavy that I made those myself. I just place triggers and life is spawned around them in wanted way.

I put those ambient scripts here in my script thread (they are for free use and I have more coming):
http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=120439

The enemy mortar fire is a result from failed hidden task (located in Kakaru, mentioned in random civilian converstions) in 2nd mission. Its a small detail and I tried that the mortar fire isnt too heavy. I could still weaken the explosions.

I will improve that outro too.

Great to hear you liked the 4th mission intro. Noone had yet commented it so I thought the music choise was too freaky. I made that intro before deciding to create a campaign. Then I just tweaked the mission part to fit in the campaign. The 4th mission is definitely my favorite, even when I could improve it more too.

Edit: Okay, I didnt realise until now how much fireplaces I had placed in 2nd mission. Those are all now gone or without fire. I also found a bug which made the traffic unlimited. With those fixes already, I believe the performance is now better in that mission, but going to tweak things more.

[SaOk]

[SaOk]

I made a new version 1.45 with mando missile script (by Mandoble) replacing simple support module by BIS. You can call limited CAS, bomb runs, laser designated bombs and ammo drops. Also the Javelin and AA-launchers are affected by the excelent script.

I also made more AI functions. Enemy tanks shoot now sometimes random buildings (I will continue tweaking that, and plan to have bigger role for it in final campaign mission), enemy army soldiers also use much smoke grenades in some of the assaults (in 3rd,4th&5th mission).

Campaign overview is also improved with new campaign pic, added text for it. And the mission overviews have bigger pics and text.

The new extra featurefrom 1.4 with whole player's group as playable is improved with working tasks for every soldier. Some scripts (especially the shouting scripts) are also tweaked to be more performance friendly. Not sure how much it can be seen in performance, but at least they look little less awful now if opened.

btw. If someone is playing currently older campaign version, all version are good for feedback. Its also possible to change the campaign version during playing. The campaign progress remains, you may only need to revert current mission.

[Barbolani]

SaOK, first of all, congrats! Awesome and very fun missions. I love tha AI.

Now the problem:

In all missions starting I receive an error regarding I nedd an addon (something about a British inf unit or something like that, I'm at the office right now) but I can still playing.... Until the third mission, that the addon problem stops the campaign.

AFAIK this was an addon free campaign, ain't it?

[Zipper5]

The campaign requires ARMA 2: Combined Operations, which is ARMA 2 & ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead. It also requires you to have at least the Lite versions of the BAF and PMC DLC packs, both of which are in the latest final patch for ARMA 2: Operation Arrowhead/Combined Operations for free (1.59). Make sure you have ARMA 2: Combined Operations patched to the latest version and you should not get any errors.

[Barbolani]

I'm stupid, I'm on 1.51

[mathias_eichinger]

Beta test for version 1.45:

Visitors in Sakhe

The Intro was well made, introducing the story and location. What was missing, however, was any kind of music to go with the intro, and voices would have been good of course.

Briefing: Good layout, my obectives were clear to me, and the map was not overloaded with markers.

The mission itself started off rather easy on normal mode (good choice of dialog here) with some sporadic contacts in the village, but picked up speed as Charlie arrived with their Hummvee. I was re-tasked to take the crossroad further south, but the objective to defend my position was never ticked off.

The southern crossroad was well defended, including 2 tanks, but after a fierce firefight, it was no problem to clear it - good balancing here.

The Outro was not breathtaking but served to tell more of the story.

[SaOk]

Thanks, Barbolani

And thanks for test-report Mathias , I will work more on the cutscenes. That campaign intro definitely needs some music or voice-acting.

When I added the task to display for all playable units, marking tasks as succesfull broke in every mission. I will fix that for next mission.

[mathias_eichinger]

Takiban Valley

Sorry, this is no proper beta report as I cannot finish this mission.
I went out of my FOB towards a crossroad where I had to secure it and guarantee the safety of a Guerilla T55. After I accomplished this objective, it was not ticked off.
Heading into Feruz Abad in pursuit of an objective to find a downed helo, I spotted some heavy smoke which turned out to be the downed helo, and a very well made cutscene kicked in.

After the cutscene the mission turned out merely into a choice of differenct crossfires, neither I could beat. If I try to go in a straight line across the mountains towards Anar, I end up being shot by massive enemy forces from behind and from the left flank. Employing my sole LGB strike can take care of the sniper-accurate machine gunners in the hills behind me, but as soon as I enter Anar from the north, several enemy cars approach, as well as a T34 from the left flank which leaves me hopelessly outgunned, since I have no more airstrikes left.

[SaOk]

Thats sometimes very tricky part, but remember that there is a radio call for guerilla help (2 tanks and infantry) and you are able to call ammodrop with extra Javelin. Also if the enemy tanks are both in sight and quite near, its possible to take both out with single laser designated strike (designator and batteries are in the mg hummer) which always have two bombs dropping with few seconds separation (in which time its possible to spot a new target for second bomb by just moving the already  activated designator). Still I could make that part little easier for the easiest difficulty level, I have had difficulties to beat it too sometimes.

[mathias_eichinger]

Examination of Bastam

Is another mission I cannot complete, but maybe I am overlooking things.
Since I already know the first two missions, I used the "campaign" cheat to start off with the 3rd mission after a fresh re-install of ArmA2.
After an easy stroll towards Bastam I encounter a well-made cutscene after which fierce fighting immediately breaks out. I have only a few seconds to check out the HMMV to try to grab a laser designator which is not present in the vehicle. I have to point out that more often than not, the HMMV is toast before I can run back to it, since the enemy tanks are first to appear.

As an alternative, I use the air support console's Ammo Drop, but no aircraft or descending parachute is seen before the force of at least 3 tanks overwhelm my position.

Questions

Is the missing laser designator a bug or a consequence of cheat-use e.g. non-sequential campaign play?
In what form and distance does the ammo arrive?

Recommendations
* Delay the advance of tanks a bit in order to allow the player to prepare.
* Add AT weapons to the HMMV

[SaOk]