Alright, now that I'm awake I can address some points
I only noticed a slight stutter when the camera scenes swapped and began moving. Really was not bad at all. Nice touch to add a cinematic summarizing the previous operation that leads to this current one. Couldn't help but feel that there is more to come with this Specops team and their exploits in the Sahara, after reading the Situation.
Thanks! I've left the mission open for a sequel should I decide to dive back into editing again properly.
Dual insertion was a great option, however, I felt it was not far enough apart to provide a different or more difficult approach. I get it though; you were trying to place the player as close to the first objective as possible. I just feel you missed an opportunity to increase difficulty without adding a single unit to the mission.
I don't think a big difference in difficulty was really what I was aiming for with the dual insertion, but rather just simply a strategic choice based on what objectives are up. If the intel was located in the south of the base for example, then that makes the civilian insertion more compelling. If the 'neophron' objective was up, then that might compel the player to go for the paradrop insertion. Both insertions have their pros and cons of course.
I think there was also a conscious effort to make sure that the mission didn't become a running simulator. A very early version of the mission had the paradrop insertion further away from the AO and the player wished that they had a vehicle despite the mission being stealth in nature. Back then there was a bigger difference but I think it came at the expense of player enjoyment and engagement with the mission. What I've found is people want to get into the action as quickly as possible and not feel inclined to press the + button; so the paradrop insertion was moved closer and consequently the difference between the insertions was blurred a little.
Also I think the insertion placement was designed to take into account all objectives rather than just the first.
I understand that the difference between the two insertions is not exactly night and day, but I think I've done a decent job at balancing them whilst ensuring that there is at least some difference between them. I think I just see the insertion choice differently; not so much in terms of difficulty, but rather just giving the player choice of strategy. Difficulty wasn't the focus is what I'm saying.
I know you mentioned that adding units wouldn't be necessary but perhaps a couple of well-placed guards in the village area could make a noticable difference in difficulty.
It's fine if we have differing views on these things by the way. I'm not saying your perspective is wrong, far from it. By all means state what you think and feel in the review if/when we come to that.
I don't have access to the briefing as I currently post this so if the briefing dresses the civilian insertion up as being considerably more difficult then I might need to reword it a bit.
I chose the air drop first. I liked the red light green light touch. Always wanted to do that in OFP. I thought seeing all those patrols roving the desert with their flashlights was cool, and it made me feel awesome as I weaved through their routes. That is until I discovered that they are truly blind out there in the hills.
Yeah I wish it were possible to show the player jumping out
. Despite a lot of testing, it's not possible unfortunately.
As far as the AI is concerned. You'd be amazed how different the perspectives I've heard when it comes to the AI. I've had people tell me that the AI is too accurate; too punishing and that they can't finish the mission. I did early tests with the AI wearing NVG and...yeahhh those guys are too strong
. I think AI balancing is one of those neverending battles, but I think I've hit a sweet spot where the AI is not too good but also not terrible either.
I also get a kick out of weaving between the patrols
. They are random of course which means that some playthroughs could be more challenging because the groups happen to be closer together.
Regarding the power transformer/generator, as mentioned earlier I think this will need re-engineering or re-designing, most likely in the form of simplification. I don't want to remove the feature but if I need to make substantial differences to it in order to make it work, then so be it. I think the script suffers from being more complicated than it needs to be especially since the 'benefit' the mechanic provides is not a huge one. Just bear in mind that the new version of this mechanic could very well differ greatly from its current state. It's a shame because I was really happy with how it worked, especially since it was stress tested (though admittedly I didn't switch off the generator multiple times as you did, hence why that specific issue slipped through the net).
It's very strange that this issue should happen now after removing an addaction command of all things. The problem may always have been there of course and the addaction removal somehow revealed the issue.
EDIT: Update on the generator issue. It's very difficult to solve a problem that doesn't make logical sense. As I suspected, there's no reason why the alarm script should be firing. Interestingly, the bug would appear a random amount of time after disabling the power, rather than being a consistent 37 seconds. I removed code line by line until eventually I got the bug to disappear but at the expense of the 'repair' script. For some reason, the 'alarm' variable is being made true despite nothing from any script telling it to do so. It's completely bonkers and stupid. But it's not the first time that the game has thrown an unsolvable problem at me.
The solution it seems is to do away with the repairman entirely and have power be restored from a backup generator a random amount of time after power is disabled. If the bug persists, then I think I'll have to remove the generator from the mission and just chalk it up to Arma nonsense. What's absolutely insane about this is that the detection within the mission runs on knowsabout values (1.4 or higher triggers the alarm), and yet when the bug occurs and the alarm script fires, the player's knowsabout value is 0! Absolutely bewildering.
I will clarify in the briefing that the enemy have limited quantities of night vision equipment, in order to clear up any confusion.
as explosive charges can only be detonated from a maximum of 600m
Yeah I've gotten my radius and diameter mixed up. Should be 300m; will fix this.
I did wonder whether anyone would notice the AI reacting to doors being open
. There was an earlier version where if the AI saw an open door then they would investigate the building with the open door. Unfortunately though the AI pathfinding wasn't good enough for this work consistently. When it did work though it was really cool; had a voice line and everything
The lone guy sunbathing in the unnatural light in building A
Yeah discipline is a little lax in Kalb's army and so this guy just chills out inside rather than actively patrol
. Wanted to try and make it so the enemy soldiers were not complete drones.
Also, the anti personnel mines, claymores and maybe even the anti tank mines(never tried those) should be excluded from the fired list as well. I was very disappointed that I could not ambush the enemy with those after the go ahead chaos.
I will look into implementing this. I was trying to avoid the issue of explosions happening around the base and the AI not reacting. I haven't tested claymores so I don't know if the player can use them without the AI reacting in some way.
just delete those trucks or use them somewhere else.
Forgot about those. Will remove.
Syncing two of their waypoints would prevent this.
Will experiment with this and see if it works.
I was confused with that last scene of the helos lifting off. Didn't we already call in the air assault?
The helos you see in the outro are there to further support the ground assault as they move to mop up the airfield. The assault you saw in the mission is more of a QRF to take immediate advantage of the 'clear sky' so to speak. It wouldn't have been possible to have ground forces in position ready to assault the airfield immediately because the enemy would likely spot them prior to the mission, and therefore the base would have been on even higher alert.
Think of the outro as being more of a continuation of the assault you saw in the mission rather than being different.
I can clarify this in the briefing though if needed.
The mission never ticks off in the scenario listing once complete.
Yeah unfortunately from what I can tell, this is more of a BIS problem. Essentially in order to get a mission to tick off on steam you have to use the BIS_fnc_Endmission function . The problem is that despite using this command, the mission doesn't tick off. It turns out that the solution is to have the same function be used at the end of the outro. The problem though is that you always get a debriefing window when you use the function, which, at the end of an outro, looks incredibly jarring and out of place. To make it worse, the debriefing window you get in the outro is blank; it doesn't take into account what you did during the mission itself.
I've also tried using the command 'markAsFinishedOnSteam' but that doesn't seem to work either. I might be using this command incorrectly but it does say that it marks the current mission as finished on steam.
In any case, I haven't been able to get this to work. I certainly don't want the outro to be spoiled by an annoying debrief window. You can disable the debriefing completely, but I don't think that's something anyone would want.
If anyone does have any ideas on how to get this to work by all means let me know; it's possible I've missed something.
Speaking of the outro, I'll add your name to the beta testers list as well.
I think that covers everything for now. The biggest problem is the power generator. Even though it's not technically a showstopper, to me it is because it's a feature that currently doesn't work as it should and spoils the mission currently. I'm going to try and retain as much of the feature as possible rather than going down the easy route and simplifying it.
Thanks very much for your feedback
.....not as bad as I thought it would be!!
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. The detection script works on 'knowsabout' so the only theory I have is the value spiking but I have no earthly idea what would cause it do so, and do so consistently. Ugh, I hate issues I can't explain or fix. I might have to remove the feature entirely if I can't find a solution. A few have questioned the usefulness of the power being switched off so perhaps it's removable wouldn't be as catastrophic as I think.