(Review Completed) [SP] Airstrike

[Tom]

This is my very first mission to be submitted here - and my very first mission to be played by anyone but me...well hopefully
Please test it out and tell me any bugs or problems or anything i should modify. Thank you!  

Now here's the lowdown:
You play as an A-10 pilot who must fly a solo mission to bomb a Russian convoy on Malden. Once the convoy has been destroyed, you must return to base and land (a final objective will become active as you begin to land...details in the readme)
ADDONS: None
OFP version: V1.46

Erm...i think thats all. Watch out for that shilka!


Edit: This mission is available from the Missions Depot.

[XCess]

I'll give it a quick go using ECP. Noticied the OFP version is 1.46, check amazon for GOTY (which includes Resistance), real cheap these days

**EDIT**
Had a quick go bvefore it crashed on alt tab.

Ovierview
Fine

Intro
None

Briefing
-Should be seperated into paragraphs.
-Needs to be more formal, remove reference to Scott Akin.
-Notes should be changed to an intel section, linked to in the main page.

Mission
-Perhaps add chatter or small cutscene to Humvee ride, inspection would be a lot better in a cutscene
-Troops on road at airfield should be moved, my humvee nearly ran them over and then took a while to sort himself out
-Didn't now which plane to board, by the time I found it the convoy was already in Chapoi.
-The reminder to raise the landing gear is totally unnecesary.
-After reaching waypoint to, I got  awaypoint telling me to return to base, add another waypoint that will only tick off when the convoy is destroyed or remove them altogether.
-Found convoy in Le Pessagne, and it was static, this caused the radar blips to be white and I couldn't effectively target them.
-Shilkas weren't a problem.
-I ended up landing the A10 NW of Le Pessagne out of frustration of not being able to target properly.
-Destroyed all but on of the trucks with grenades before I crashed the game with an alt-tab

[Tom]

crash? I never had a problem with it crashing...(the game i mean. I had a lot of practice strafing the convoy with the A-10 so i didnt crash the plane. Others may think otherwise)

i'll take all of these into account and edit the map some more. Except for the breifing. I'm still learning how to compile that effectively... I guess i should have stated the mission as a beta first. 

[JasonO]

It crashed when he alt+tabbed. I think its a hardware problem, mine does it sometimes.. mostly when im in mission editor and havnt saved for about 20 mins 

[Tom]

hmmm. Well its never done that to me...all it does is freeze all the time, which is a pain the neck.

But anyway, i went and edited the mission some more and here's the newest version. All the fixes are in the readme. And i forgot to mention that this mission is meant to be a quick mission, so dont expect it to take a thousand years to finish with Ridley Scott style movie scenes here there and everywhere lol.

And thanks for the test, XCess  :thumbsup:

[greg147]

*older version*

I gave this one a try (no mods or anyting). I agree with most the points bought up by XCess, although for me the convoy was still moving when I attacked it. Shilka did fire on me, took me down to about 3/4 armour before I destroyed it.
I destroyed all the trucks, although there were some surviving infantry. Either I had missed a truck somewhere (I counted 4 and a UAZ), or the objective complete trigger only activates when the whole group were destroyed (infantry too).

Another thing I noticed was there were too many planes at the base IMO. If there were than many, surely there would be at least one pilot already at the base to attack the convoy? Also, I couldn't turn the plane from its starting position right ont othe taxiway, due to lack of room (kept hitting the trucks), so I had to take off in the field east of the runway.

I didn't get to see the new objective, i'll try this again later.  

[XCess]

The crash was in no way your fault Tom, just I had to alt-tab and OFP froze up. Blame my anti-virus

[Tom]

woah these replies spring up like bamboo! lol

greg147
Im fairly sure the win trigger will only activate when the trucks themselves are destroyed as ive seen happen over a dozen times. It must have been a truck you missed. (there are 1x uaz, 2x urals, 1x ural fuel, 1x ural ammo and 1x ural repair).
But its best just to avoid the shilka altogether. But if it really gets annoying you can wipe it out if you want, nothings stopping you. I often blow it up if i have some missiles left after the convoy is destroyed.

And about the plane taking off, just keep the speed at around 10-20 and turn slowly. I get it everytime. I should have stated this in the briefing.

XCess
Phew...had me worried there for a second lol. Well, i hope the new version dealt with the previous one's probs. Except for the cutscene suggestion. I cant do cutscenes lol, thats just one thing i have yet to master.

Thanks all!

[Cheetah]

Airstrike

Package
Complete, with a good advertising picture and decent readme. You might want to create a few more sections in the readme. One with general information, one with contact information, a detailed description and some of your notes could go into a help section.

Overview
The picture is the same as the one in the package, okay. It needs a border though. The text is fine.

Intro
You might want to create an intro which tells us something about the front line, the convoy and maybe some additional stuff. Just to entertain the player.

Briefing
The briefing needs some attention as XCess told you. Split it in a few paragraphs, remove a lot of the blue dots, and you might want to remove the "Your A10" marker.
The notes should be written in italics / other font, to make it clear that they form the notes section. Furthermore the group section is empty, which means that we start in a vehicle, to fix this, move us in the vehicle a few seconds after the mission begins.
You might want to shorten the briefing up a bit, it contains too much information that could be left out. Any detailed information goes should be on a special page.

Mission
BUG: if you 4x speed yourself to the airport you don't get out of the hummer. I had to do it all on 1x speed and found that it was a bit slow, can't you let him drive faster (full speed)?

Anyway, there's a lot of planes here, hope that they won't cause any lag later on in the mission. You might want to remove a few of them, and let a soldier guide the player to his plane. (didn't experience lag)
Nice work with the mechanics working on a plane. The hints are not good, not realistic. It would be better to let intel tell this to you by radio.

Okay, so I take off, good stuff landing the Chinook there. Nice. Remove the hint that tells the player to get his gear up. Please remove all these hints, as they don't do much good.

1. Go to the waypoint, fly over Chapoi, destroy Shilka with maverick, disable convoy from pretty far, except for one truck. I took it down with my machine gun, but the mission didn't move on. I tried shooting again at a few of the trucks, flew too low and crashed. Retry.

Destroy Shilka with maverick, disable convoy from pretty far. Pretty easy (1st time I double shot at one truck, so missed one rocket for the last truck), just tab and shoot / repeat this. You might want to save the game when the player reaches the first waypoint (near le port).

Get near the airport, do the landing without the auto-stuff, don't find it necessary. Save the game before I land, touch the ground and they tell me to get up in the air again. It's pretty hard to follow all these radio messages, consider doing some voice acting as that would help.
Retry the game as I'm in a bad position to take off again. This time as I'm about to hit the ground I get the radio message and go back up, still got 300 speed, good. Then the dogfight begins, I manage to stay behind the aircraft but it takes 832 shots to bring it down. Well, maybe it took three ones, but I didn't hit the others . Not a trained pilot, or not good in these dogfights. I never liked the A10 vs Su airbattles, the A10 is a bit too slow imo.

I get my bird down and the mission ends. You might want to adjust the trigger that actives the enemy aircraft coming to the base, I think that it activates when the player flies below a certain altitude.

Conclusion
A pretty straightforward but enjoyable mission. Not much to add. Check the bold text.

[Tom]

thanks for testing it out, cheetah. But i noticed that you played the first version (i think) instead of the second one.

I have a retry position that is just after the second waypoint. Its been there since the beginning, but maybe its too small an area? I will have to position it somewhere where the player will pass through.

With the trucks, sometimes you've damaged them so much that the driver just bails out, but the truck doesnt die. And yes, i know its a bit hard to spot from the air, but i did state in the readme (one of em) that if you miss or screw up, there's always the retry position at the 2nd waypoint. Maybe you missed it?

I will adjust the trigger that makes the enemy plane come in. Trust me

And with the voice acting. Its good, and if i had the resources and know-how, i'd do it. But my microphone is buggered beyond belief and even if it worked i wouldnt know how to add voices into a mission. (Will look around for tutorials)

Will edit the markers.

Will make the hummer drive faster.

Will consider an intro...

I changed the hints so now you can only see em if you're in cadet mode. Do you mean the autopilot/gear hints, or the hints such as "the convoy has passed through Chapoi"?

I will clean up the briefing. I think ive got a tut on how to add all the other stuff (italics, paras etc)

I will relase the 3rd version with all these fixes soon. 

And thanks for the input Cheetah.  :thumbsup: Now i know what needs to be done in both this map, and future ones.

edit: Most of the newer changes are in teh second one, with thanks to XCess. So now a fellow pilot will take you to your bird so you wont get lost. I'm going off to start editing.  :thumbsup:

And also, was the music ok? Both the take-off music and the track that plays when you shoot the plane down.

[XCess]

About the vehicles, try using canMove whether than alive to see if they are damaged enoguh to cause the drivers to bail.

Code: [Select]

canMove vehicle
Operand types:
vehicle: Object
Type of returned value:
Boolean
Description:
Check if given vehicle is able to move.
Does not test for fuel, only damage status is checked.
Example:
? canMove (vehicle player) : goto "nexttarget

View in COMREF

You could also try the engineOn check, also in the comref

**edit**
Thought of another way you could use ?((crew truckName) == 0) to tick the objective aswell.

[Cheetah]

Please include version numbers Tom. It helps, people will test the correct version .

[Tom]

ok, i made HUGE adjustments to the mission and here is version 3.

And also, i found out that the "not (alive Unitname)" trigger (which i use for teh trucks) only works on the trucks themselves, so you dont have to shoot the driver if he escapes.

Well, enjoy version 3 then 

EDIT: After some testing i found out that there were some errors with the triggers. I quickly fixed these and now here's version 4. I'm really sorry to be a pest and all, but the AI are just plain annoying sometimes. 

Hopefully this version will be the last one.

[Cheetah]

Okay going to test this one, hope that it's changed in a good way. Please remove all of the previous versions you have attached, people don't have to download them. You can unattach them by going to additional options and then unchecking the box of the file.

Now going to include a complete report as I've already played this mission and I will do again in the same style.

Airstrike v4

Overview
- Still no border.
- No version number.

Intro
- I can see the player before the cutscene starts. To fix, start the cutscene with a black screen ( -> titleText ["","BLACK IN",9999]; )
- Don't like the music change.
- Good camera scripting.
- You see a convoy get destroyed, but this is what you'll have to do in the mission too? A bit strange.

Briefing
- Group bug still there (no group section displayed)
- You might want to have the link to the intel in the plan and not in the notes section.
- I suggest that you remove a lot of the blue dots. That many dots won't make the route that much clearer..

Mission
- You want the cutscene at 1x speed, use the "setAcctime" command.
- The mission works with 4x speed.
- I don't like the hints.. please no hints or only display them in cadet mode.
- There's a hint with "convoy has passed Chapoi", replace this with a radio message.
- The flight music is good. The retry point too.
- Stop the music as the retry point kicks in.
- Destroy the shilka and convoy, one missile left.
- Good retry point + radio messages.
- Don't have to land to get the message that the enemy aircraft is approaching.
- Destroy the enemy plane with less than 100 (!) bullets, whooah new personal record.
- It was a bit easy this time, the whole mission was.

Debriefing
10 min, 3400, all obj ticked off.

Outro
- None

Conclusion
I'm that you can think of something to increase the difficulty of this mission.

[Jimboob]

I'll give this one a test tonight or tomorrow.