Ahh! Finally finished this little pearl, and I'll try to give you as much information as I can in this beta review. Note to all: contains massive spoilers! DO NOT READ. This is a good mission : give it a spin! No showstoppers in here, so carry on!
OverviewWorks well, I think - although you finally get the point of the mission's name as well as the point of the picture at the end, it's a little fuzzy from the beginning. I suggest the same "idea" (greyed out picture of the general-whatever), but with a more interesting pose than the standard "ArmA chin-down" look
Maybe a profile, or a full-face frontal? Not that important though.
IntroI have to admit I mostly missed this. I watched it while the mission still kicked up the missing addons bug, but then I didn't see very much - I think the "flashing pictures" didn't work out that well for me because of LOD loading...strangely the same worked fine in the outro, so I don't know.
Also ArmA nights for me are VERY dark, so I didn't see that much. Might want to focus more on this "evil's last will" somehow...not sure. I mostly just heard a chopper all the time, and some random (non-subtitled?) voices.
BriefingExtensive, properly linked, pictures included...pretty perfect. Might need some tiny English grammar corrections (can't think of any right now) but other than that there was nothing wrong with it! The notes section nicely explained the "out of character" things as well such as weapon switching. As a note, the objectives (of which there were many) all updated properly during the course of the mission, so everything was fine there as well!
MissionAll right! Note, it took me about two days or so of several hours of playing to get through this baby, so I might have forgotten some stuff inbetween. I'll just explain how I did things, what my problems were, and suggestions for improvements. Note that I had no problems or error messages with anything at any point, so these are indeed all just suggestions.
I started in the boat - good work on the custom resource, and very good work on getting the boat to actually get all the way to the shore so that I could "get out" - small things like these are much appreciated, especially in the beginning. And I was once again reminded of how nice ArmA can look like during certain times of day/weather conditions. Voiced radio messages throughout were excellent.
I tried for the target zone twice. Once I went the way you're probably "supposed" to go - the shortest route. I dodged a camp in a fjord, and another machine gun nest (I think) with a fire - nice work on the "what's that stench?" comment, made me check my surroundings more properly. Finally, close to the final destination, I saw a strange object on a hill. Lying down and peering at it through my scope, I saw an ammo box and a small tent. I barely had time to think "oh, looks like a sniper's ne--" and I was shot. Arrgh. Hadn't saved during the trip there either. So...try number two, I do what any self-respecting playtester would. I went far south, speed x4, to the mountain chain that goes west-east. Hidden from all possible patrols, I simply ran east until I was in line with the base, and then headed back north. I killed a small camp of three men + a sniper sitting by campfire, within sight of the base. No-one seemed to have reacted, and I gave the third survivor and the sniper plenty of time to call in. Maybe they didn't actually see me at any time...but that's fine. I'd hate to have to restart just because I didn't kill everyone within 10 seconds...
So I finally got to the lookout post - nice timing on the trigger, I had time to lie down and aim at the base and all, so I really was in position.
A note on the cutscene here : while the gun aims at the different characters, you might want to add a little randomized camera movement, to simulate breathing/unsteady aim. The "camsettarget" commands are a little...precise
There's hopefully a script for it someplace in the ED...
Otherwise the whole lookout-cutscene-etc was absolutely excellent class! Tense and with well done radio dialogue and interaction, and finally the whole "should I shoot him or hold fire?" thing - I don't know what would've happened if I'd've shot him, but I guess nothing much (except Fuchsbau, that bastard, would've been angry)
Superb work! Also gave us a preliminary look at the "real bad guys", and the Chechen addon gave them that special creepy "unknown" look.
Once done, I'm ordered to move back - which I did, the same way I came. So it took a while. Although I was honestly expecting not to be picked up by boat (bad weather) and to get new objectives. Well, once I get them, I head out towards Hunapu - once again, I first try the shortest route, and promptly run into a BMP-2. I try to sneak past him, but I think he had already spotted me and I was gunned down. D'oh. Second try -> went further around, once again using x4. Hunapu was nice - there was a bus that seemed to be doing things it should be doing (stopping at bus stops and such) and other cars driving around - it was also getting very dark, so I had to use NV goggles. Classic OFP feeling. I decide to head towards Pacamac using the right side of the road (closer to the sea) and head that way...no traffic, no patrols, no nothing, so a little uneventful I must say. Eventually I spot the destroyed Ural and BMP and bodies, and know that I'm probably in safe territory. I follow orders and check out the town - once again, nice work with the triggers, but I wonder what would've happened if someone hadn't followed the road to get there? ArmA is a pretty freeform game, after all!
But the whole "check the town for russians" etc thing worked perfectly, and I moved down towards the people who looked most like leaders (the guy with the hat!), and I was right. It was very nice to see the freedom fighters in action, looked like a real resistance base.
Also the whole "put down your weapons!" thing seemed to work - not sure if I did it right, but I put down my gun via the gear screen anyway, and the dialogue seemed to continue nicely. Didn't "stress test" it since I hadn't saved once again and didn't want to have to make the whole trip again, just for the pleasure of seeing if you've made the resistance fighters shoot me if I didn't do what they asked
Anyway, I get the next objective (excellent voice acting etc - doesn't make too much sense that the natives speak German, but hey - as little sense as they speaking English, eh?), and head off towards the meeting point - nice extra with the leader's brother! There I pick up the peeps - once again, excellent acting, radio comms and placement of the resistance fighters - well done!
Here's where I accidentally "broke" the mission a little: as you know, the Black Venom camp is in that forest up in EI(J?)-20-something region, -straight west- of Matadero. I was planning on going north, and then straight east into the big M to avoid the question marks on the road and such, and kind of wandered into their camp - actually I saw the firelight and got curious. There were no radio messages (like "We found a secret camp!") or anything of the like, and when my soldiers were randomly walked over by the two patrollers all hell broke lose and we eventually got ourselves killed. Note that this also broke the triggers that allowed the 2 extra people to join my group halfway to M!
Suggestion: make it possible to discover the camp, but either make it a) empty/no ammo boxes/no car (=they're still out on a mission) or b) make it mostly empty (no car, just a few guards), and if attacked, will fail the "hunt down black venom" objectives since the rest of the soldiers will have escaped once they realise their camp has been attacked - Fuchsbau will give the order to Luchs to not investigate the camp further but to continue to Matadero. A c) option would be to dynamically spawn the camp when the objective becomes active, or to make the camp location random to make it less likely to be accidentally found.
I figured these people weren't meant to be found yet though, so try number 2 I went straight to M as you were supposed to. This time I also got the cutscene where the 17-year old joined the group, although I think I was in the wrong place since they spoke of canyons and things (I was in the middle of the forest someplace), but the joining worked fine. Weird bug: once the cutscene was over, one of my men had the "Mount" order and was running into the forest. Don't know what he wanted to mount, but I ordered him back. Anyway, in Matadero I then cleaned out the town (note: you need to spiff up their AI, currently when attacked they'll just hit the dirt and not move - give them Sentry waypoints followed by Search & Destroy ones, for instance - this way they'll stay put until they spot an enemy, and then go into S&D mode). Very nice cutscene once again in Matadero, followed by the next objective becoming active. Yay.
Big bug (not a showstopper): I was ordered to find Falke, but I failed. Where the heck is he? I went to the location, and the objective ticked off, but there was no cutscene or anyone joining my group or anything. :-/ No message about him being dead either...there was just nothing. Fargh. In the end just before the chopper arrived I suddenly reported in that he was dead, but...eeh...
Please note: if you've used i.e. the disableAI commands to keep Falke put while stuff happens elsewhere, remember that a save/load resets them - so either teleport him from some island, or use another command (like stop)
Phoie - long mission! Anyway, so I move on towards the camp, which I know where it is due to earlier mistakes, and set up above it, and spot most of the soldiers in it. When the time is right, I order an open fire - bang bang, feuer frei, lots of dead Black Venoms. Once again: improve their AI! This is the perfect place to create a scary ArmA AI: nighttime, deep forest, lots of places to hide and bushes to shoot through. And they just lie still by their camp fires and do nothing. Activating a S&D WP once again would make this whole fight a heckuva lot more exciting! Take it down - no losses. Kill the last loon hiding behind some barrels too, and get another objective.
Annoyance: By this time I've used up all of the three saves I get at the start. How about giving us some more? You could also use a countdown system and add saves to it as needed (like I did in Op:DH) -> Saves left (5). Whenever an objective is completed, add another save that can be used whenever. That way people can decide themselves when they want to save. In this case, I loaded up a whole UAZ of stuff, drove off to the ambush point, successfully ambushed the convoy, had a tense firefight in the rain, and then drove off - only to drive off a cliff and die stupidly inside the car trying to get to Hunapu through the mountains. Arrgh. In the retry I ambushed the convoy and then just drove the UAZ along the roads, since ArmA AI can't attack own-side vehicles during the night
Useful for me this time around, and it felt pretty realistic too. The lack of save was annoying, however.
Oh, about the convoy ambush: put down a bunch of mines, armed everyone with RPGs, and added a string of satchel charges along the road. Satchels + first mine took out the T-72 and the BMP, and another mine took out the last Shilka. Objective complete.
Very tense and nice firefight in the rain though, especially using MadMatt's effects (with the rain enabled).
Would've been better with more saves though!
Drove back to Hunapu, got the last chatter (the resistance soldiers left my group, exited the UAZ, entered it again, had a conversation with me, and then exited it again. Oh well). Didn't get any special mention for saving the 17-year old brother
Also note Falke wasn't with me at any time. But I had no problems with the convo in general, but then again no-one was dead. Then I moved over to the extraction zone and waited for the chopper - note, I had to take option b) -> I think the problem here is that you (the player) are still "assignedAsDriver" to the UAZ (or CRRC or whatever) - you can probably reassign him as cargo to the chopper, which might fix the problem (player assignascargo chopper).
Anyway, I fly off in my own chopper, into the thunder and rain, and the mission ends - extraordinary success!
OutroThis one worked very well! Nice job using custom resources for the names, nice timing, nice choice of music, nice scenes, nice voices...the quick scenes really worked this time around, no problem with LOD shifting or anything! You could have added a little more to the story about "if only I had killed him before"...but I really have no big criticisms. A more "in-game" outro might've been nice too, where we get to know what happened with the resistance and so on, but this was perfectly fine!
Very nice ending for a very nice mission!
Random notes:
Enemy patrols and enemy AI reactions need some improvements. I attacked the convoy like a hundred meters from the ? in the north (there was a UAZ and some soldiers there, I think), and no-one had reacted. One'd think they'd send someone to investigate a lot of explosions and shooting, no? There were plenty of places where nothing happened - like the whole road section from Hunapu to Pacamac was pretty empty. Likewise the mountains seemed completely devoid of movement. Hm hm. You might want to consider adding a (random?) chopper - few things are more atmospheric than being hunted by an unknown aerial assailant. It would also keep the player from just randomly commandeering a vehicle and making all the on-foot episodes pointless. For instance: after attacking the convoy, a Mi-17 is called up from nearby Pita airbase, and sent on a Hunt and Kill mission after the guerillas - if it spots them (trekking over the mountains) it'd drop parachutists on you. And strafe you with its machine gun
Maybe closer to Pacamac or Hunapu, a friendly AA of some sort (Stinger launcher?) would drop it out of the sky, or it'd simply retreat. If the player is in a vehicle, it'd be attacked automatically, thus keeping the player from abusing the poor night-time AI.
Overall:
Excellent mission! Fix some tiny bugs, in -particular- the save game one (just add a single radio channel, with a global var like savesLeft, and make the condition this && savesLeft > 0, and the on Activation savegame; savesLeft = savesLeft - 1. Whenever you want more saves, you just add to them using savesLeft = savesLeft + 3. Easy-peasy!), and you'll have a definite winner! The script and acting and everything works out quite excellently, and the objectives are manifold. Might have wanted to use some of the addons more - for instance you could've mostly omitted RHS's russian troops addon (changing the story only slightly, say russian spec ops + local militant troops), and you could've used some of the other things in the CWM pack, such as the excellent BTR-80 and BMD-1 vehicles.
Good stuff. Sorry for the extensive write-up, but it's a long mission! Nice work!
(Edit: attached two pictures I took! One is from just above the Black Venom camp, before attacking, the other is from ambushing the convoy in the rain. Great stuff!)
Wolfrug out.
Edit: image attachments (evilslastwill_pic1 & 2) lost in crash of 2009 - WEK