Missions Depot > Arma3 - Reviewed Missions
(Review Completed) [SP/A3] BOBCAT v1.3 Final
Gruntage:
'Ello everyone! It's been a while but I've finally got a mission ready for release. It's only been 11 years but who's counting ;)
Version: 1.3 Final
Type : Single Player
Island: Sefrou-Ramal
Time of Day: Night/Early Dawn
Weather: Moderate fog, dry
DLC Required: Western Sahara (other DLCs will give you access to other weapons etc, like Marksmen).
*NOTE: This mission has NOT been tested with AI enhancing mods. These mods could cause unwanted behaviour. Use mods at your own risk.
Download: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3036685614
Description: SAS Team Sabre are tasked with destroying key enemy assets at the airfield in Sefrou-Ramal province, Argana.
This mission was designed to blend Arma 3 with stealth elements from games such as Splinter Cell. The result is an immersive, atmospheric and tension-filled mission that requires patience and attention to detail.
Features:
- Choice of infiltration method
- 30 minutes of custom soundtrack
- Around 1 hour of gameplay
- Random Objectives and placement
- Random quantities of enemy patrols
- Random placement of enemy patrols
- Ability to shut down power and remove base lighting to give the player a slight advantage
- Fully voiced cinematics
- Improved AI detection and behaviour, including but not limited to:
- Dead Body Detection
- Checking for suspicious activity, such as opening of doors, shots being fired
- Ability to shoot flares when alerted to player's presence
- AI conversations when player is close
Changelog:
V1.1
- Reduction in AI dialogue volume
- Adjustment to flares script; the flares were appearing too soon
- Beta testers added
- Bug with satchel charges fixed
- Extra information added to briefing and tasks for clarity
- Minor visual hotfixes in outro
V1.15
- Slight rewording in briefing
- Addition of hints for drone usage
- No longer possible to shoot friendlies in the FOB without punishment (sorry Inlesco :D )
V1.15 Hotfixes
- Civilian truck now locked
- Campbell is no longer immune to damage
- All choppers are now locked
- Campbell cannot be dragged on the floor
- Player's stamina increased slightly
- Ambient radio messages from air support are now conditional on whether there are enemy vehicles still intact at the airfield
V1.2 Beta
- Addition of a selection of satellite images accessible via the action menu in-game to provide a little extra intel for the mission
V1.2 Beta (Hotfixes)
- Minor corrections to player addactions (addactions were accidentally being duplicated or not being removed)
- Minor fix to briefing (missing word)
V1.3 Final
- Generator shutoff mechanic simplified and fixed...shouldn't trigger the alarm when used
- There are now consequences for shooting out lights in the base. If enemies are close to any lamps being shot at, they
will respond and the alarm be raised. This was a better alternative than simply making lights indestructible.
- The briefing detail concerning enemy night vision equipment has been clarified
- Detonation range corrected from 600m to 300m in briefing
- Claymore, AT Mines, APERS Mines, APERS Bounding Mines, Tripwire Mines and SLAM Mines added to 'FIRED' exception
list; allowing player to place these without the alarm being triggered upon placement
- Nearly all empty vehicles have been locked for player use
- Enemy patrolling MARID waypoints synced to prevent queuing
- Minor adjustments briefing concerning friendly attacks on the airfield
- Updates to BETA testers
- Minor adjustments to intro cinematic for better timings and fadeouts
- Task location for the 'Destroy AA' task has been fixed (by using modules rather than scripting commands)
- Adjustment to one enemy patrol group location. The group was previously patrolling along a dirt path and
occcasionally would get run over by an APC; triggering the body detection and subsequently the alarm. The group has
been moved away from the road to prevent this from happening.
- Slight increase to patrol count outside the airfield
- Leaders of enemy patrol groups outside the airfield have been given night vision goggles to increase threat and
difficulty. Testing by myself has not resulted in a huge surge in difficulty, but this can be amended if others find it too
punishing
- Addition of tower sentry in Al Mahbes village
- Addition of additional patrol group between Al Mahbes village and airfield.
v1.3 (Hotfixes)
- Generator shutoff action should no longer appear during the shutoff animation
- AI animations restored (they were accidentally removed when I saved the mission without 3DEN Enhanced)
- Minor adjustments to FOB buildings to ensure all are locked
Known Bugs:
- For some reason, when save games are loaded an error message may pop up stating that an image is missing from the mission. The image in question is in the mission folder in the directory that the game says it's not. Not sure how this can be fixed. It doesn't affect gameplay though.
- Animations in cinematics exhibit occasional freezing (not sure how or why this happens); not serious but could damage immersion
- FPS drops during parts of the mission (this is discussed below, hopefully what you experience won't be anywhere near as bad as what I've had)
Author's Notes
So as I mentioned this is the first mission that I've managed to get into a releasable state. A lot of blood, sweat and tears has gone into the mission and it's in a state that I'm fairly proud of. Whilst I have been very thorough in my own testing (I'm extremely pedantic), it is possible that there are bugs that I've missed. This mission has been play tested close to 50 times and I haven't come across anything gamebreaking; the mission is very simple in its structure. Though that's not to say that there is no complexity.
Unfortunately during the course of developing this mission I've run into many performance issues and sadly some persist in this build. This mission isn't particularly big but you may experience FPS drops at points, particularly later in the mission when the bullets start flying. There isn't much I can advise here other than possibly reducing your graphics settings should you need to. This is something I've had to do as my PC is no longer the cutting edge machine it once was (it's 6 years old and needs updating).
It's for the above reasons that I'm tentative about adding more content to the mission as it will only exacerbate the performance issues. The mission has been trimmed back multiple times to try to improve performance. Hopefully you guys won't have the same issues I've had in playing.
Despite all this however, I do think the mission is an enjoyable experience and worth playing. I don't make missions for myself, but rather for other people to play. So hopefully you'll like it.
In terms of strategy, I won't give too much away at this time. However, what I will say is make sure you read the briefing, have patience, be careful with your movement and avoid light sources. That is of course assuming that you'll take the stealthy approach ;) . Dead bodies can be dragged using the action menu in order to hide them from view.
Credits:
- Dead Body detection by The Futurist
- Jukebox script by Celery
- Animation recording functions by HLF
- Drag body script by H8ermaker
- Music score by Alexandre Desplat, Lorne Balfe, Avery Alexander and Scott Buckley
I hope you enjoy what I've put together!
Regards,
Gruntage
Inlesco:
Congratulations on the release, Gruntage! Will be testing this out in the upcoming week!
Undeceived:
I'm in too! Looking forward to play it.
Edit:
--- Quote ---Jukebox script by Celery
--- End quote ---
A classic. Simple and effective! :clap:
Undeceived:
Ok, I tested it yesterday night. As written in the SW, it's a great mission! :good:
Some smaller things I noticed:
The voices (soldiers and the officers at the meeting) are too loud. I thought they were just next to me but they were still about 50 or more meters away. I guess that a realistic volume would be too low, but you could tune it down a bit anyway.
The flares came to fast, IMO. Maybe a randomization would be an idea. 5 to 30 seconds or so.
At the end of the outro sequence, where the group is standing at the chopper, they all have the same face.
Another thing in the ending cutscene: There were no beta testers listed. Only "Beta testing by:"
A small suggestion for the briefing: Add a small line that you start as lone wolf. This wasn't clear until I read that unit 2 can join you. It could be that there is such a line, if yes, then put it more to the start of the briefing.
This might be an AI or Arma thing but: When putting big satchel charges (I used them for one the choppers) the alarm is raised, even without LOS. The smaller explosive charges worked well. Perhaps you could remove the satchels as finding this out, took me a while.
Other than that the mission seems to be solid, didn't find any bugs or showstoppers.
Ah, I started with the civilian insertion.
Gruntage:
Hi man, thanks very much for the feedback!
--- Quote ---The voices (soldiers and the officers at the meeting) are too loud. I thought they were just next to me but they were still about 50 or more meters away. I guess that a realistic volume would be too low, but you could tune it down a bit anyway.
--- End quote ---
Yep, will tune the volume down a bit FIXED
--- Quote ---The flares came to fast, IMO. Maybe a randomization would be an idea. 5 to 30 seconds or so.
--- End quote ---
Good point; will increase the time FIXED
--- Quote ---At the end of the outro sequence, where the group is standing at the chopper, they all have the same face.
--- End quote ---
Haha! I hadn't noticed that. Will change FIXED
--- Quote ---Another thing in the ending cutscene: There were no beta testers listed. Only "Beta testing by:"
--- End quote ---
Yeah this was intentionally done until I had names to add. Now I do :D FIXED
--- Quote ---A small suggestion for the briefing: Add a small line that you start as lone wolf. This wasn't clear until I read that unit 2 can join you. It could be that there is such a line, if yes, then put it more to the start of the briefing.
--- End quote ---
I think there might be some text explaining that already somewhere but I'll make it more prominent if so. FIXED
--- Quote ---This might be an AI or Arma thing but: When putting big satchel charges (I used them for one the choppers) the alarm is raised, even without LOS. The smaller explosive charges worked well. Perhaps you could remove the satchels as finding this out, took me a while.
--- End quote ---
I hadn't noticed that while testing but it sounds like an Arma thing unfortunately. I'll remove the satchels as they're not needed; explosive charges do fine. I tend to use the drone to deal with the optional objectives personally. FIXED
Once again, thanks very much for your feedback. I was worried there would be a showstopper I'd missed :D
Thanks,
Gruntage
EDIT: Actually, I just realised what the issue with the satchel charges might be. I have a script that checks whether what weapon the player 'shoots' with to see if it's unsuppressed or not (the alarm sounds if not), and I have a line that allows the usage of explosive charges but not satchels. Placed explosives are classed as 'fired' weapons in eventhandlers. That's a mistake on my part and easily fixed. Sorry about that. Oops :-[
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