Hey Undeceived
Tested on regular with Arma 1.62 + latest beta.
I started with the first mission again because I was interested what you had changed.
Mission 1+2: Nothing to add.
Mission 3: Starting to inflame again:
The barman stays alive this time, i reloaded a lot to see if it happened at some point. All good. I can however still run around with the handgun and kill everyone outside the bar without resistance, only if I cross an invisible line (inside the bar) or kill the officer all hell breaks loose. Later at the barn, I had the impression that the AI reacted much better this time. Not sure if you changed teir behavior or they just had a good day.
Mission 4: Setting up time:
I remembered all weapons and magazines i stole in mission 3 to see if they were transported to mission 4. The good news is - they were all there. The bad news is: I had no handgun. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with it, but when mission 3 finished I was in a stolen UAZ. The UAZ was gone at the start of mission 4, which is hard to avoid I guess.
Just an observation, it is possible to have both conversations in the beginning simultaniously.
Unfortunately, having no handgun screwed up the mission big time for me. I couldn't sneak up to the russian base and then infiltrate it at a good position. No matter how I approached, I was quickly pinned down and while time passed, more and more reinforcements arrive at the base. After roughly 70 reloaded savegames I decided to use endmission, pinned down in a barn surrounded by 4 armored vehicles. I am sure this would not have happened without the missing handgun, maybe you can add an extra one to the weapon crate.
Mission 5: Martin's list
Very nice and funny detail with the rocker car in the beginning. The AI's pathfinding also made it look like the driver was drunk
I had problems to get off the bus, after dropping us off it would back up and crush Kamil, thus failing the mission. Luckily you had an autosave just before the drop off, so allthough it took a few attempts it wasn't to problematic. But as Inlesco suggested, this can be fixed with unitplay. The bus also ran into a house after the drop off, which would be fixed as well). Another thing, Kamil took me into a backyard where nothing happened on my first two attempts. On the third try, he took me to the car, a bit further down the road. Must be the AI pathfinding. A mapmarker would fix this.
The setup, robbing a weapon stash and ambushing a convoy, is
terrific. BUT i think the player needs a little bit more time. I took out the guards at the weaponstash quickly but lost some time after being tied down by incoming enemies. With a bit more time, I could have prepared a better ambush. I'm just talking about 1-2 minutes here, it would still put the player under pressure.
Mission 6: Martin's List 2:
I'm not sure if the cutscene was the outro of mission 5 or the intro of mission 6. However, it is awesome. I love how you use the most mundane features of Chernarus, it might sound silly but it really brings the country and characters to life. I'm talking about simple stuff like a bus stop or in this case a little lake with a pier - it's great.
The mission is a great classic stealth scenario, a lot of fun and very detailed. I spotted no bugs.
Mission 7: Inner Abscess
This one also worked completrely bug free for me. The twist in the storyline is unexpected and adds to the movie type feel this campaign has.
Mission 8: Alexej pribotov
I experienced similar bugs as Inlesco did. Unexpectedly, the mission started inside of the car, at the parking lot, and the lines in the cutscene overlapped ( a mix of storytelling and dialog), repeated and made no sense. There was also random fade in's and fade outs - I can't really explain, but it felt like there was two camscripts running at the same time. Also the fades and some text continued while the actual gameplay had already started. While following the car, some text displays were triggered, their content indicated that that the mission should have indeed started outside of the city. Some of the chat conversations is displayed twice, also the task to follow Pribotov is displayed twice (see .rar file with screenshots).
However, the rest of the mission plays smoothly and finishes. Great idea with the gps marker by the way. Only thing to be mentioned is that while the mission finished, I was being engaged by a hind - if the mission had not ended chances are high it would have killed me.
Mission 9: Petrovka Strike
The mission starts with a scripterror:
Tomas setGroupID "Tomas";
TomasF setgroupID "Tomas";
Error: Nicht definierte Variable in Ausdruck: tomasF
File
Campaigns\und_blacklands1_1beta\missions\09petrovkastrike.Chernarus\init.sqf,
line 60
Another convoy ambush - I absolutely love these and I have to say, I have never been immersed into the resistance role like this before. The assasination and it's setting was also superb. After the assasination, there is a bit too much running for my taste... It's 2km to the castle and just before arriving I have to change course into Grishno which is pretty far again. I fail to change weapons after I took out a patrol in the woods and find myself in a close combat environment with a heavy sniper rifle and a pistol. It takes me ages to survive an attempt to steal a weapon of a dead spetznas in town. The enemy AI behaves very well.
Moving on.. I can imagine this was done purposely, but two of the angry guys in the forest have no weapons on them. Taking out the russian camp proved to be
very hard, but not impossible as it turned out. One guy in the forest does have an rpg, but it takes effort to prevent him from wasting it on foot soldiers. I hid my guys in a forest, snuck into the base and used the AA gun to take out the vehicles.
After the attack, I properly armed my units and managed to get away just before reinforcements arrived. This was good because the BTR would have slaughtered my men on the way to the truck if I hadn't done so.
This is a very long mission. It has enough content to make two, maybe even three whole missions. It is not a problem, but I feel that facing so much armor needs to be balanced out a little bit by giving the player appropriate weaponry before attacking the camp. The joining units in the forest could have a car with another rpg for the player to use.
Mission 10: Resurrection
This mission mainly serves to develop the story and it does a tremendously good job. I found the setting of the arrest very dramatic. The following cutscene has a great twist. The first half of it, where Dimitri reveals he is the head of the Red Star - well it is already great and detailed but the second half with the KSK rescuing Tomas had me sitting infront of the screen with a dropped jaw. AWESOME!!! Really... wtf!
Conclusion:The campaign is on a great path. Yes, there is some issues that need to be adressed, but the quality is huge. Storyline, characters, cutscenes and last but not least mission design and gameplay. All top notch if the bugs are fixed. I played the campaign in german this time, and all lines made perfect sense, never cheesy, but very fitting all the time. Great effort btw to write this huge amount of text in two languages.
Here's the file with screenshots of some errors that came up
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29770617/Blacklands%20Screenshots.rarLike I was hoping, the weight is shifted from cutscenes to gameplay while the campaign goes on. I am thrilled to play the remaining missions of this campaign.