v0.91
ArmA 1.14,
Custom AIskill/precision values, Hifi Sounds 1.5
Packagefilename typo: first resonse.zip
no preview picture
readme: Installation instructions should be aimed at new players and more in depth. Especially for the included addons
readme: Version log; 1.91 instead of 0.91
readme: Version log; "loose ending changed. 3 type endings" I've noticed only two endings, player dead or Stryker destroyed. No outro lose was played.
otherwise the readme is pretty much as suggested in "Standards for Mission Authors"
OverviewPicture:
typo Responce -> Response
To be true, this title is the only thing reminding me of the mission. At least you could show the flag inside of the base, or show the Stryker and squad on it, or an insurgent scene...
typo: Paraisio -> Paraiso
"Op First Response 3-05.5." Those numbers make no sense for me. Are they a military information, or just a left over version number?
Contact information could also include your email.
IntroIt takes a second to switch from player 3rd person to camera with cinema border. Black in the scene. I don't know much about it, but wasn't there a new cutscene precompile command in ArmA? Does it help to get rid of this first second without camera?
BriefingTypo: are -> our
Immersion:
Don't declare the story as "Story:" inside of a serious mission.
Don't tell the player directly that "m1a1 added as a way to select difficulty". Just write to use the tank is up to him and add some points to his score when it wasn't moved over the mission.
Mech repair info page: typo; brake down -> break down
MissionAgain the intro takes a second to kick in. BlackIn.
The whistle doesn't sound like it's coming from a soldiers lips, more like a
playSound coming from everywhere at 100%. And because this whistle is used almost the same way in the official mission Blood, Sweat and Tears, playing the real music track would be leave a more serious impression instead of a repeative dejavu.
When leaving base sidechat "Bravo1 to base" shows up, but no further message or response radiochat follows.
"testing testing." hint when leaving the base
"2000 ex points sniper is history" ect.
Man, I really hope all those immersion destroying writings everywhere are just part of the beta testing, otherwise you'll have a hard time tracking them all down and removing them.
There's nothing turning me away from a mission more than hints and notes like this everywhere, telling how the mission should be like. You should put in the work for everything to become obvious without calling it out loud.
My suggestion are realistic sidechats with the HQ for every sniper kill and safe house clearing and adding the the points silently to the player.
There's a simple issue about the time of operation. It's already lite up but an AI driver will still turn on the Stryker headlights. That's really bad if you're walking in front of it and become totally blinded every time you're looking behind.
Starting the mission a little bit later shouldn't make you lose the dawn scenario.
When it actually comes to working with the
briefing and map markers they turn out to be absolutely irritating. (Look at MrN's mission procedure above)
1. Briefing says to "destroy" and not just to "clear" the safe houses.destroy ~ find, secure and blow up the structures yourself
clear ~ find and clear the hideouts
(maybe "destroy" is US military slang for just clearing and I'm not aware of that.)
btw You've added nonfunctional time bombs to the Stryker, even more suggesting that there'll be something to blow up in the mission which is not necessary. If it's like OFP in Arma, there are beeping TimeBombs for cutscenes and exploding PipeBombs for gameplay. Use the Pipebombs to get rid of the bugs if you really want to give the player satchel charges for the mission.
2. Arrow Marker linked to "safe houses" objective.My first thought is that there got to be a safe house just in front of the check point. When I don't find one on arrival, I start to think and read again. ..."Safe House unknown location"... a red position marker "Patrol for insurgents"... some red question markers scattered across the town...
Hm, okay: I've got to patrol in the area marked with some questionmarks (instead of the normaly used area marker) and keep my eyes open for something looking like a(/one!) safe house. Beeing the mission maker I am, I'm curious to see how you will have created a obviously safe house out of the preplaced skyscrapers...
But that's totaly wrong, when playing I get the idea: Every questionmark is a possible safe house location I've got to inspect. The position marker about patrolling doesn't mark a important position. The arrow marker about the safe house just points into the direction towards the enemy.
My marker setup would be:
- remove the red arrow completely
- remove the position marker "patrol..." completely
- change the questionmarks into position markers, link one of them to a objective called "Search & clear all reported safe houses"
- create one red and oval area marker over the whole city (or some smaller rectangle ones if you want to be more clear about the mission area). then link it to a objective called "Patrol area for insurgents"
3. Objectives tick off wrong.First objective "Clear all enemy contacts" is marked done when the main safe house is cleared and blown up by itself.
Second objective "Destroy safe houses" remained unchecked all the time. (didn't get the 2000xp at every safe house location)
When I've got the point, I've started to clear the safe houses from north to south.
No one was fast enough to board the BMP every time I arrived at the main. Maybe you could give that a better chance than 0/5 to happen.
Still the mysterious instant explosion of the main safe house killed me frustratingly often when I cleared it of the last loon.
You could add a warning like "Damn this guy is a walking bomb, get away!", a hidden one minute countdown (for the player to safe as much AI as possible from the explosion) and finaly a satchel explosion to the last dying loon of the guards. + maybe a runaway script for every civilan too close to his corpse to safe the players score.
Also the main safe house/BMP encounter would definitely be one of the best things to be randomly placed either at the shed, church or factory or nowhere.
At the position of the screenshot, I've encountered a mysterious road side bomb.
I can't see more than palettes so I'm not able to avoid it by experience+eagle eyes and I don't get an autosave before. Even more it's such a big explosion that it even kills the Stryker instead of just disabling it which would give me a good reason to use the Mech Repair option. This is just unfair for a player.
Anyways when I avoided the place by using a savegame, the bomb still exploded after i already moved a whole block away from it?
"The stryker is down!"
This situation triggers the message "Get back to the Stryker!" afterwards, probably because the vehicle isn't alive anymore and the 150m check becomes bugged.
Radio:
Air Support
Typo? CAD -> CAS
No player sidechat call when activated, just the pilot's response.
"RTB" abbreviation in the sidechat after the flight mission is finished should be replaced for inexperienced players. +add player roger sidechat
BUG? I'm able to call the CAS even before leaving the camp. Will I get at least a penalty for calling it successfully without knowing about armor?
Mech Repair
Use sidechat instead of local chat for the communication to keep coherence in unit chats.
Keep the rendezvous marker on the map and don't delete it soon after the mapclick.
Add a radio sidechat conversation when the rendezvous point is reached.
It looks like you're using a group for all the three vehicles, if this causes to much path finding trouble in the city you should make every vehicle a group of it's own. For now they seemed to be capable to navigate as one group.
Got one error message, probably one of the suicide bomber scripts. It showed up in a firefight. See screenshot.
any thoughts about these would be nice to hear.
satchel charges show up in stryker but not in players gear after selecting them
Use pipebomb instead of timebomb.
heli crashing
Ok, it was shot down once but didn't colide with buildings. Though i didn't had to rely on it for the BMP.
more random encounters?
improve AI?
Insurgents AI was good, they seemed to reinforce in the right extent when a cell was attacked. Would've been bad if the whole insurgents join the first firefight at once. The two UAZs found me where ever I did start a fight.
Safe house guards placed between buildings were as stationary as always in ArmA, not much you could do about that.
Snipers on the skyscrapers looked good. Well, sometimes they decided to walk off the roof.
Overall a nice result for using this ai unfriendly city terrain. Much polishing is still necessary.
EDIT:
Debriefing"Good job but some insurgents are still out there."
19960 points
5 silver balls
I don't know if you really use this for the xp score, and I don't know how the ball symbols work in ArmA. That five silver/grey/empty balls should represent a B rating. In my observation I was missing 2000xp from one safe house clearing but I would swear that the whole city area was free of insurgents when I did debrief. M1A1 wasn't moved, Cobra CAS wasn't called and Mech Repair was alive.
OutroNo win and no lose outro was shown.