(Review Completed) [SP] Un-Impossible Mission

[macguba]

Thanks chaps!   I will:

- Reduce the volume of the Briefing music.

- Put the ammo barn guard outside.  He's never shot me, but then I know he's there.  I was hoping he'd get somebody by surprise but its quite clear that he hasn't.   Actually I might just delete him.

- Find the missing savegame.  (Edit:  I just checked and it worked fine for me.  It's number 1 on the radio menu.)

- Check the placement radii of the enemy groups at the start, they shouldn't be mixed in with your squad.  They are meant to start pretty close sometimes though.   Retrying the start is intended to be a feature of the mission.    Occasionally you get no attacks at all (the attacking groups are all on probabilities) and it sounds like this may have happened to you at the base.    However, you tend to pay for such statistical bounties later in the mission.         (Edit:  checked and they seem to be OK.   AnarCHy, can you remember which start position it was?   Choices hidden below so as not to spoil.   Highlight to read.


- inside base
- edge of village
- old scud position, tucked under hill
- tree junction with lorry
- main junction with ammo and jeeps
- bikes under trees
- bmp ambulance
- ammo dump, bikes and abrams
- extra line to confuse people
- ditto[/size]


- Continue to have no GPS in the mission.  ;D    I've tried to make everything as hard as possible:  navigation, the ground you have to cover, (Planck was killed twice by the mountain itself), time of day and so on.    The fear of being lost is part of the experience.    I'm used to navigating on real mountains in real fog and this is surprisingly similar.     If you don't keep a clear head you do start to panic.


There are two groups of blackops I think, and five lots of ammo crates around the hill including the secret stash, so finding HK mags shouldn't be a problem.    The ammo crate in the barn has a couple of bizons, and there are a couple more at the dead spetz natz camp.

Congratulations on stealing the chopper. :thumbsup:  After I did that I added lots and lots of AA loons.  ;D  (No vulcans.  There were some but I took them out to help reduce lag by having fewer vehicle types.)     The secret is to use it quickly to zap just a couple of tanks and then dump it.    You never get away with being greedy in this mission because there are so many enemy on guard waypoints.  Reviving the pilot would be "cheating" by the mission designer according to my self imposed rules for this thing, but thanks for the thought - yes it is true that every time somebody does something I add a twist to stop them doing it again.  

The chopper does chew you up occasionally, and once it gets a fix on you it just keeps coming back.  The good news is that I've seen it do the same thing to an enemy squad.

I haven't fixed the 4x fence hopping trick.  Not sure how to really - it didn't even work for me.    Anyway its not a big deal:  if you want to take the risk of staying in once place for a while on 4x that's up to you.   ;D

The groups stand around because of the fog.  They are on guard waypoints and have been called in to help.   However, because of the fog, they can be 30 yards away and not detect you if you're quiet.   So they just stand there until you are detected again.  I could script them to do something more interesting, but I want to keep this on simple triggers and waypoints as much as possible.   Plus it would add yet more lag.

The differences between 0-60 and 0-61 are small:  if you have a good savegame on 0-60 play on from that.   0-62, the version on my hard drive, will be up later this week.   Only changes will be a few more minor tweaks and the outro.

I'm not bothered about game time, its not a race.   Somebody will eventually do it in less than 26 hours.   I've changed the flag in less than 10 minutes, admittedly in an easier previous version.     Changing the flag is of course the easy bit.  


HateR_Kint, you gotta finish one.   It is really hard, all the polishing up crap like making outros is tedious, but you just have to be determined.


Latest version is still 0-61.[/b]

[LCD]

lol.... remove em MM1s i never got shot by 1 of those.... and i wiped half of the hill forces just by shooting randomly

nywayz im not allowin u 2 release new version.... till i finish dat 1

LCD OUT

[macguba]

Good point.    I've reduced the expected number of heavy grenadiers at the top of the hill from 4.5 to 1.5 and removed the 6g30 from the ammo crate.    I still want to keep the chance of you doing that though, its tricky to get the range right but fun when it works.

The next version won't be that different:  there has been no significant change in difficulty since 0-55. although it has drifted up slightly as things have been fixed.   (0-55 is MUCH harder than 0-50, which was the version everybody played last Christmas/New Year.)

[LCD]

also do somin w/ da 1st aid thingy... i keep usin it unintentioly

LCD OUT

[macguba]

No, having a custom action is deliberate.   Makes it harder.   :moon:   Plus changing it means another trigger (to detect if the player is injured) and there is enough lag already - I've spent hours and hours stipping stuff out and reorganising bits to reduce lag.    

If you want rid of it shoot yourself in the foot and use it to heal.

[LCD]

u r BAKA (i know words in japanese ppl)

nah.... just make this triger.... thats AI cheating.... remove the 1st aid completly then

LCD OUT

[macguba]

lol  ;D  

Are you saying you can't beat it with the first aid thingy in there?  

[LCD]

baaaaaaaaaaaaah

i already got rid of it... its just annoying that all... its not realy harder or somin like dat... after all im gonna b da next un-impossible champion

but it did made me som probs (but da AI jsut stared @ me till i finished nd den i shot him )

also da voice actin sux... specially da 1st line

LCD OUT

[macguba]

also da voice actin sux... specially da 1st line

Lol, you're right there.  ;D

[THobson]

A small lag reducer.

You have a trigger with the condition:

fuel chopper1 < 0.2

You might save some processing if you put this check in a script that loops every 30 to 60 minutes (rather then the current 0.5 seconds)

I still cannot get anywhere near beating this.  I loose to many men in the first few minutes.

[macguba]

Blimey, that's a good spot.   :thumbsup:   I meant to put that in a script but I forget.    Now done, thank you.

If you're bored of getting stuck, have a look at the start of the init.sqs.   I've had loads of reports on the first bit of the mission but very few on anything much after changing the flag.

The start is hard.   I reckon on being killed myself (never mind squad casualties) on about 1 attempt in 3 and I know where they're coming from.

There are three recognised tactics for dealing with the first 30 seconds of the mission.   One, take silenced weapons and hit the dirt in all round defence the instant the mission starts.   Two, just leg it and hope there's nobody coming the other way ... retrying if there is.   ;D   And three, playing the wretched thing so much that eventually the probability of presence stats work for you and you don't get attacked immediately.  

There is definitely going to be an outro btw, I've been working on it today.   It has a nice effect at the end.

[LCD]

bah i just tried 2 continue from were i was n4....... nd it sayz da save file got errors... f00k it

cuz i wanna finish ma mision tomoz... it means i gotta b awake 4 more an 3 hrs so ill play it on da nigh of thursday i think (or wednsday but less likely ) so... u now u must publish new version b4 i play it... since im startin again... i dont wanna test dis nd da next

LCD OUT

[AnarCHy]

Ahhaha!  I began this time around the south T crossing, with a load of bikes scattered around. :-\  A few groups came at us, and I cut them down.  I stopped my squad hidden in some bushes  near the road, and hopped on a bike.  I started stouth, or hwta I thought was south, but I found myself on the north side of the hill??? what???  Anyways, I turn around a pedal as fast as it would let me.  Get near to the T crossing and the 3 MG jeeps are just sitting there, so I pass them (no one shoot wtf ) anyways, I feel lucky so I go down to the civvies, which takes about 1/2 hour because of the bike i'm on (lol all the way there on a bike hehe).  I find that it is blocked on the road, but I can pass without anyone shooting. (fix dat, I would shoot a spetznas on a bike, wouldn't you?)  I pass the chopper, and the other...stuff...and talk to the civvies.  I get Nikolai and Lukin, after some odd triple-talking woman, and we board the...non-chopper (don't wanna spoil it) and we go run down some americans.  I pass the block and find four missile people shoot at me, so I died dang, I was doing kind of good this time! (but me whole squad died.)

Hehe a large selection of stuff there, why so big?  I wouldn't think the americans would leave it...all there now would they? Especially if they know about it? Meh I don't care it is a bonus

Nothing I could find wrong other than that and the no-shooting on a bike bug(?).

Good times,
AnarCHy

p.s. no lag this time!  ECP was the problem (and maybe the 6GB of addons I had at the time )

[THobson]

Thanks I will.

Bye the way, I was thinking -  fuel around 0.2 and waiting for 60 minutes might be cutting it a bit fine.  0.3 should be ok.  I am sure you figured that out anyway.

[macguba]

I've been beating the outro into shape ... my god cutscene making is hard work ... it should be ready in a couple of days or so - that's all there is to do.    Oh, and I'll have another crack at those dreadful sound files in the cutscene.    The volume controls don't work.

The fuel check I've done every 15 minutes... its a bit complicated because I've dropped into an existing script so I didn't want to take any risks.   Anyway, that's a lot slower than every frame which is what it was before.   ;D  (Triggers check every 0.5s if the condition is "this":  otherwise they check every frame like an @ command.

AnarCHy, I don't know why these guys didn't shoot at you.   Or rather, I do:   its the advantage of the fog combined with the poor light combined with the fact that spetz natz (and blackops) are very hard for the enemy AI to see.    (In another mission I've actually been prone in touching an enemy guard in a patrol group without being detected.)     I can't do anything about it.   Using a script to fix this would break my self imposed rules.    Anyway, they got you on the way back so what are you complaining about.   ;D

I cycled down to the civvies once.  It  took so bloodly long I nearly took the bikes out.     Glad to hear you got both loons, that's the first time anybody's checked that.   I take it you didn't have a full squad at the time?  (If you did you shouldn't have got Lukin.)    

There is indeed a wide selection of stuff there:  the intention was to offer a spot where the player could rearm his squad if he realised that his weapon loadout was wrong.     It is restricted to two weapons of each type.    

I've packed every goodie I can think of into the village to make it worth the trip.     The original idea was to have a wise old man in a cave who could offer advice on completing the mission to people who were stuck.    However, in order to make it worth the trip I had to add more and more.    You have to remember that this is still a mission design exercise, not an ordinary mission, so the occasional hole in the plot must be expected.