Hello SaOk, here is my beta test report.
Unfortunately I didn't finish the mission - but just read on.
Mission version: First beta version you posted here.
Mods used: I began without any mod. Later I started with that addon from Zipper5 which prevents infantry using AT against infantry.
OVERVIEW:- Great. Good picture, mission description and loading screen. All worked finely.
BRIEFING: - There are a lot of typos (also in the whole of the mission) - you might want to check these.
- Other than that all is clear and the player knows what to do.
- The pistols of the other AI units should be removed to prevent the pistol bug which happens from time to time. I also removed all binoculars because the units stop all 200 meters to use it.
- The SMAW ammo was a weak one - and I had to add it manually ot the own gear.
INTRO: - Great intro sequence. The tracers and the chopper going down really were beautiful to watch - even though I also had the chopper going outside the camera angle at one point. But I didn't feel this looked odd.
MISSION:- In the conversations sometimes it is difficult to get who is talking (at least until the voices are implemented). You could do something like:
Doctor: Sure. I'll help you! Blabla…
- You used taskhint. However it would be better to use these either before or after a conversation - not in between. Because this causes a bit of confusion, since the player has to follow the conversation and also wants to check what task was checked / created.
- About the part where you find the doctor and ask him to help you:
The fact that I didn't know who was talking, confused me that much that I didn't understand that I should follow the NAPA guys to help them. I stayed at the Doc waiting for him to move to the chopper and the NAPA guys went on without me and so I lost them. Eventually I saw the marker on the map and went to the position but nevertheless you should make it clearer that the player has to follow the NAPA guys. Either make the player join the NAPA team or give the player a hint so he knows what do do.
- When I arrived at the doctors position, I saw him suddenly switching to the healing animation. Same happened later at the chopper wreck. Switch the anims earlier so that the player doesn't see it.
- After the team was healed: All of a sudden there appeared a truck marker on the map.
Cool, but - was it mentioned by someone earlier?
- Anyway, I took it and drove to Mogilevka. On the way there there was some stuttering (FPS drops).
Just to add to this subject: There were micro stutterings in the whole mission - I think that this happened because new camps and patrols were set. But I'll write a bit more about this later.
- The civilians are dynamic and this has advantages but also some downsides. The downside is that I can't imagine that half of a village's population will stand still on the nearby fields at 5 AM.
This felt a bit noncredible.
But one moment later then I saw one of the advantages of the dynamics: A civilian with a motorbike came along and crossed a field, like as he was taking a short cut. That was cool and contributed to the immersion.
- Talking about immersion: Crossroad notified that the enemy was using artillery. I thought "Ok" and went on but after 1-2 minutes I heard the impacts of the artillery in the distance… Wow - what an atmosphere!
Cool!
- The subtitles at the conversation with the NAPA leader on the castle were way too short. Btw. - I loved his
pet looking out the castle!
Probably just a random spawned animal.
- Somewhere along the way I had to reload the game, then a script error appeared (
see screenshot).
And another script error came when I was near the antenna after talking to Mr. Schwarz (
see screenshot).
- I think it would be good if you don't delete the markers from the map after an objective is completed. After destroying the antenna (task from Mr. Schwarz) I wanted to fill my ammo with some AT rounds, but the marker of the ammo box was gone. So I couldn't find the crate anymore...
- In the "truck with mines" near Zub there were no mines at all.
- The CDF commander sent me to Gorka to destroy a AA truck. After this I went to the village and experimented a GREAT firefight along the CDF reinforcements (with tanks) and my unit members. That really was cool!
- An enemy plane was around us for the biggest time of the mission. It's nothing bad but I think that the player will suspect pretty quickly that the mission maker has something to do with that.
I mean - did you command the plane to circle the player's position?
- When I was around Vybor, suddenly the performance dropped significantly (down to 12 FPS). It stayed like this for about 5 minutes, then it went to normal FPS again (in my case: 30-40 FPS with approx. 3500 meters viewdistance).
- Sometimes the camp guards are setpossed into the ground (
see screenshot). And some are spawned in the middle of roads. Not so bad though.
- In my opinion a repair truck would be great, so I could repair vehicles that the AI groups leave (e.g. choppers, tanks, etc…
). You could embed this into another task, for example "There at XY are support vehicles - you can conquer them if you need them!"
- That "depot" near Vybor…
Not sure why you called it depot, as it was part of that huge and powerful Chedaki frontline.
I was fighting that line (and the region around it and Vybor) for more than 3 hours in total and suddenly the depot objective ticked off.
By that time almost all enemies of the line were down.
MISSION WALKTHROUGH:Ok, now that I told you some bugs, here we go for a "walktrough" of how I played the mission and what I experienced while doing it.
Check the
MAP with my route.
It was a hell of a march (so far).
0. The beginning of the mission.
1. Searching for help - talked to a woman, who told me about the doctor at 2.
2. The doctor - a confusing conversation (who is talking?) and the NAPA guys ran away and I didn't know what I was supposed to do.
3. Saw the marker on the map "Help NAPA" and moved there. Everything worked ok there.
4. Returned to the wreck and the team was completed.
5. Went to the truck and drove to 6.
6. Disembarked the truck and went on on foot (for the whole rest of the mission I was on foot).
7. First conversation with the NAPA commander
8. Searched for the NAPA camp. There I was told about Mr. Schwarz' position
9. Conversation with Mr. Schwarz - he told me to destroy the antenna at 10. AT ammo was supposed to be at 11.
10. Destroyed the antenna, had to run the first time because of artillery fire.
11. Since after the antenna the ammo box marker disappeared, I searched for the AT ammo at 11, but didn't find anything.
12. Because of that I moved to the truck - but there were no mines inside of it. Only some magazines, IIRC.
13. From there I went to the CDF camp and talked with the commander there. He sent me to destroy the AA truck near Gorka
14. The truck was destroyed and …
15. … I moved into the village and this firefight taking Gorka was absolutely awesome!
Great AI skirmish!
16. From Gorka I moved to destroy the AA positions around Vybor. 16 was the first one.
17. Some scary firefights with enemy reinforcements, as I was trying to escape south west.
18. First contact with that monster of a Chedaki front line!
It was very impressive! Had to avoid it though because the enemy was killing me inoumerous times there. A friendly tank from the CDF killed the second AA truck for me - so cool!
19. So I went to that hill south east of Vybor and was involved in a front line fight again - many many deaths and reloadings…
20. I fought myself through and cleaned the front line (including the third AA truck) and finally could move further to the north west to search for the fourth AA vehicle.
21. Took position on that hill and could overwatch the whole region of the last red circle (AA area). But I could not see anything.
22. Then I went down and searched around for the last AA and suddenly there were enemy groups wandering around and more camps, which however weren't there when I overwatched the region from the hill. Then I found the AA and another time a friendly vehicle( I think it was a CDF-tank again) assisted me and destroyed it.
23. Between 22 and 23 I had some nasty and bad fire fights against enemy troops and eventually reached 23 where NAPA guys had a little camp including a ammo box where my group could rearm. Had a nice talk with the NAPA guys and they gave us some of their BBQ before we went on to 24
24. Thick fog came up and thus the plan to overwatch the Vybor area to find the enemy depot failed.
So we went around the city, looking for the depot.
25. Met another NAPA camp, another friendly chat, but no one knew where that depot would be. So we went on to the south…
26. … and reached the "hill of death" again and tried to continue cleaning the front line - this time to the east of the hill. I could not make it and suddenly remembered "Hey - didn't they say something about yellow smoke?" Gladly I had taken a yellow smoke grenade with me at the BBQ camp (23). Then we tried to evade some 200 meters to the south on the fields. There I threw the smoke and some minutes later there really came some NAPA reinforcements in form of some infantry groups and even a tank from the CDF - wow - I just felt "Dammit, that is so cool!"
Together we attacked the front line again and SUDDENLY: The task to destroy the depot ticked off. YES!!
27. I didn't know what to do next, then I read in the first beta test that the player returned to the NAPA leader at Zub. Ok - I did the same and went to the castle again.
28. Talked to the chief to begin the assault. The funny thing here was that the front line already had been taken out almost completely. But at this time I didn't know what else would come later.
29. So we went to the NAPA meeting point south of the front line
30. Some nice AI skirmishes and firefights where we also were involved - assisting the NAPA guys.
31. Meeting with CDF and NAPA
32. Third attack of the front lines.
Haha
And hey - Chedaki forces had reinforced their positions brutally - they had everything there - tanks, infantry, choppers. But together with NAPA and CDF we crushed them again in a very very intensive and long fight. But the task ("Break through") didn't tick off somehow…
33. Then I went to Vybor (as the briefing said that we would see us there for the next step), but no one was there and the objective continued un-ticked.
34. Then I decided to continue cleaning the front line (the eastern part of it), took a sniper rifle from the NAPA ammo box at the crossroad (34) and began shooting enemies who were trying to reinforce the front line. A CDF hind was circling the front line, shooting infantry units.
Suddenly we had to run again because of the artillery and moved to 35.
35. From 35 we moved south again to the front lines in the hope that the task "Break trough" would finally tick off - but unfortunately nothing happened.
36. From 36 to …
37. … 37 I tried to continue fighting the Chedaki, but without success. I think that the problem is that (it seems that) always new units spawn when we go from one end of the front line to the other - and viceversa. This way the line can't be cleaned as every time new enemies spawn.
Then I gave it up.
OVERALL:About the dynamic elements of the mission:With the dynamic war between the parties you created something VERY special! I think that the last time I felt immersed so deeply into a continuous conflict between two sides, was in the OFP mission Abandoned Armies by THobson. And this is really is one of the "highest awards" I can give to missions like this.
It was just awesome to whitness so many skirmishes all indepent of the player.
The situations where there were cooperation between the player and AI -> just phenomenal!
About the spawning elements:I think that the downside of this dynamic is the fact that always new units are spawned. I noted some points that try to make this clearer:
1. You can't "escape" the war. If you try to do a large flanking manouver, you will AGAIN meet enemies - you can't go anywhere, where no activity is going on.
2. Read number 22 of my walkthrough. -> You can't see anyone from far, but when you go there, there are enemies.
3. The microstuttering, which happens, when the player moves on and new units are spawned. This point however is just a minor one.
Conclusion:This really is an awesome mission! What makes it that special really is (as mentioned) the dynamic war between NAPA/CDF and Chedaki/Russia (?). The war really is going on in Chernarus and the player experiences this in many many situations. That means that the war is not only a background story written in the mission's overview and in the briefing, as many other mission authors do - it really
IS there. This makes this mission a great experience.
You should make the objectives clearer (what to do, where to go, etc.) and maybe find a way to make the unit spawning a bit more "unnoticeable" for the player.
Other than that I see a hammer of a mission coming to the game!
Great job!
Just a small addition:I also felt like Mad_Cheese mentioned (but I wasn't at the airfield):
Some observations: I probably did it the wrong way, but previous to the combined attack I had already been in Vybor (to destroy the supplies) and also at the airfield (while driving around clueless after completing all tasks). Both were not heavily defended as it's the case later at the joined attack, which somewhat reduces the plausibility at this point. It should be almost impossible for the player alone to destroy the cache at Vybor or any AA vehicles behind those lines prior to the big attack.
Small addition Nr. 2:I didn't see anything of those "additional tasks", which are mentioned in the briefing. I tried to talk to civilians here and there but there was no option... No one called for help and I saw no prisioneers or mass graves (I read your reply above).
