Mate, you have had so much information in the last day or two that the most you can possibly hope to achieve is to absorb it. Digestion, and decisions about what to do about it, can come later. Responding to each tiny point is an awful lot of effort and I think most beta testers would not expect it, providing their overall effort/contribution is acknowledged. (Which I know it will be.) The more people beta test for you, the more you appreciate it.
There are two Bradlies in the Northern base?! I take it they're all friendly to each other?
Yes. One was near the fuel dump, alone, and I would not absoluely swear that it was a Bradley. (I was over 1km away.) The other definitely was, and was with a T72/T80 (I think) near the main (default) buildings in the east and appeared to come after us as a guard group (with infantry) when my no.2 fucking told them where we were.
There were loons in combat mode at the base. Lying down, covering each other, that sort of thing. As I say I was over 1km away, had not fired at them nor been anywhere near the area before. However this was after I had started the war at La Trinite.
I am very protective of the medic, although the only dangerous combats I have been in have been cock ups due to beta testing, in which case I have no compunction about going back the last save. I couldn't give a shit about 4 or 5, being civvies they are just cannon fodder as far as I'm concerned. I wish 2, who is a fucking nightmare, was dead already. In other words green=expendable, red=valuable.
I've only vaguely digested what Seal84's problem was. I am a vaguely concerened that I have seen groups just kinda standing around without doing anything, but I've never watched them long enoug hwithout killing them to suggest that they shouldn't have been doing that. As I said before, I'm very happy to set off to try and replicate difficult circumstances if that might help.
I examined Saint Louis carefully though M21 scope and saw nothing ... no vehicles, patrols or tents or anthing like that. I saw it from only one angle, from a long way off, and didn't watch long enough to detect a moving patrol which happened to be hidden when I was looking, but the overall impression was not somewhere that something was happening. If it is supposed to be I will look. I am aware that in my approach to the game I have not sought "background" comings and goings, but that is quite deliberate on my part: I read that others were, so I decided to go straight for the jugular as it were.
I'm not thrilled by this massive improvement in the weather.
Is this a comment about the design of the mission or about the implications of this on your state of health?
Both. ;D It does my state of health no favours, but also (and more importantly) I think it does the mission no favours. I appreciate that you are trying to create continously unfavourable weather (foggy when you want it clear, clear when you want it foggy) and of course there is nothing wrong with that. However, I think this change fails on two levels: firstly it is not realistic (the coincidence of the front passing and daylight arriving does indeed happen in RL, but more often the two do not coincide); and secondly you are throwing away the interest and advantages that an intermediate period - light with bad weather - can provide. In the good weather I have done all I needed to do, namely start the war and make it to the airbase, where I anticipate no problems in trashing most if not all of the defence, all I'm saying is that it would be more difficult to decide what to do, and therefore more fun, if the weather gave you choices. The good weather only took away choices from my situation, it did not add anything. But it's just another detail, not a huge deal either way.
On the "typical mac ideas" if you think its shit, or just not worth the trouble, say so: I won't be offended. If I think of something I post it, for the mission designer to accept, change or ignore as he sees fit. It's not like I really care. ;D Having said that I really do think most of my ideas are fundamentally good, if you can be bothered to implement them and the mission has the capacity. A few are totally bollocks of course. Don't worry about the "5 meg boundary". It is true that there happen to be a lot of missions in the 4-5 meg range, but this is purely an accident which results from the size that sound files happen to be. If it pushes up towards 7 or 8 don't worry about it, the number of folk who would d/l 4 but not 6 is very small. Once you are over 10meg that changes, but that isn't going to happen so don't worry about it. As long as you don't add some huge music files size is not going to be an issue, given that you are already in the 4meg+ bracket.
At the risk of immodesty, a fault from which I affect to suffer for modesty's sake, take everything I say on beta testing extremely seriously. There is the odd occasion (actually not rare) when I am flat wrong, but I am one of the best and most experienced beta testers out there - I like to think it is a speciality of mine - and most of what I say really is true. The best place to ignore me is on stuff that will take lots of effort to implement - it is often not worth the trouble. Actually most of what most beta testers say is true.
I have no experience of the variable name bug except what I have read, so I know its real and a problem. However I have no doubt that in this mission it can be overcome - I know from experience how much you can cut things down once you have the overall picture. (i.e. the "finished" mission.)
The more I think of the mines idea the more I like it. To make a simple version would not be that hard. (And well within your capabilities.) This game is four years old, why on earth has nobody thought of this before?
It is the essence of a beta mission that all the good ideas are ignored, all the indifferent ideas are criticised for not being better and all the crap ideas are panned. This is human nature. This missions has acres and acres of good ideas: as you know (from experience) I do not devote this amount of time and effort to stuff that isn't good in the first place. I don't want to say anything about the mission as a whole because I haven't finished it yet, and frankly most of the time I've played has been pretty dull. However, it has huge potential, and I strongly suspect that much of that potential has already been realised ... which I would discover if I played the mission in a potential-realising manner, which. due to laziness, I am not.
I am still very surprised at how soon I got the "they are fighting each other" message and the firefight. There must have been a Northron patrol in or very close to La Trinite even though the Southron convoy was there. It may have been about to leave to be fair. My limited experience of La Trinite is that you don't have even as much as 15 minutes between bad guys turning up: I entered as soon as one lot had left and after several retries really only had time for a cursory rearm of my squad, to give them all longs rather than just pistols, and for me to drive three vehicles as far as the burnt out tank to the east before the other lot arrived.
The solider walking down the road before shooting the girl at Vigny is good. You, the creator, have had and executed well a good idea. However, the job of critic is so much easier than inventor that many people have been able to spot easy ways in which the scene (which they themselves could not have invented) can be improved. Be flattered by the advice, accept it and move on. If you feel low, remember that you yourself are one of the best beta testers around, as the Unimpossible mission demonstrates, or rather will demonstrate when I make it finished.
I take your point on who is transmitting the radio stations. However this links into the whole text story: it's not tooo hard to make something up that is plausible. Maybe just broadcast on the hour.
Choppers flying continuously in a fuel shortage is a problem. Maybe make it that fuel is only short-ish, but is rigourously controlled by the baddies.
Tip: Given that you have some working sound files, don't re-record any more till the end. Script and story will change more than you might think, and it just hassles your friends and family to keep re-doing them. Leave the voices till you have the script absolutely perfect. For interim versions, if you like, just record your own voice so that there is at least a sound file there, and tell us what is going on.
Total autosaves will not work in this mission - its much too open and you cannot tell what the player will do. There are several approaches that you could employ, all equally valid. At this stage I think you should just give consideration to the various possibilities and how many the total might be. The details can be slotted in in a late version.
The mines are good. The better something is, the more people can and want to improve the idea. In this mission you have particularly set yourself up for criticism, by proclaming that you are trying to do something realistic. You're not the first, I've played many (usually shite) missions that claimed they had the "whole island" experience". But one thing I can tell you from not just OFP but life in general: criticism is directly proportional to quality. Nobody wastes time cricitising rubbish. The huge and repeated response to this mission (I see many people making repeated posts) states very clearly that it is something that those people regard as valuable, and worthy of their effort and comment. Any beta post, no matter how critical, is a compliment to the original mission.
If Andropov is brutal but professional, and Stamenov is just evil, then you need to bring that out more. I know I've been told that, in amongst a whole bunch of other stuff, but I haven't really absorbed that. If you really want to get it across you need to embed it in the mission: for example Andropov towns have a few whole buildings and lots of graves: Stamenov are ostentasiouly different: trashed buildings, evidence of rape and robbery, and bodies rather than graves. If you want to bring this out, do not attempt to be subtle: this is a subtlety, therefore it must be handled obviously. (Things that are obvious should of course be handled subtely.)
Topic: (Review Completed) [SP] Abandoned Armies (Read 216200 times)