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Offline Sui

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Facile Ground Feedback
« on: 22 Sep 2003, 10:11:07 »
Right, no mission is ever perfect...
I know for a fact that this one wasn't ;)

I created this thread to host all the feedback/comments/suggestions/criticism (constructive... please ;D) on Facile Ground.

Any opinions or comments regarding my mission are highly valued and appreciated. Bug reports even more so ;D

I learnt a hell of a lot making this mission, and if it showed me anything at all it showed me that there is still a lot I can learn. So please, feel free to play the mission and beat the crap out of it with an iron bar in here (as I said... constructively please :)).

Offline Sui

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #1 on: 22 Sep 2003, 10:27:16 »
Quote
Posted by Dinger in comments

Well, let's see:
First, yes, it's impressive: a lot of work went into this, and it shows.  This is without doubt one of the top missions for OFP.

Now, for my criticisms:

A) Camera work: there are some excellent shots and some nice cuts.  But I'll point something out that someone once hit me with: just because the camera can move with every shot doesn't it mean it should.  Also, it seems like every shot was done with .7 FOV

B) The mission itself:
Okay, I played it extensively.  I got to the "clear minefields" section, and it took me three retries until I succeeded in marking every mine (Shouldn't the mine markers be on top of the mines? It looks like they were createvehicled without a setpos).  Since I tell the engineers to come in, shouldn't I be able to order them in without actually finding every mine?  I mean, if I say I marked them all,
they should just roll and get killed, and then jonno can give his profuse apologies or something.
Finally I got the "we got all the mines" message, and the engineers started breaking them. They got half way through, then just stood there.  I waited a few minutes, then grabbed a car, drove through Larche to the other end, LAW'd the convoy, MG'd the UAZ.  Grabbed the UAZ, sniped at the town, got hit, drove back to base, healed, grabbed a fuel truck, drove back into Larche, bailed out, shot some guys up, LAW'd the shilka, killed everyone else, got the "Setting up command post" message. Nothing happened again, so I went to La Trinite' (pronounced "trin-ee-tay", by the way) where the other platoon was supposed to be tearing it up.  The town was empty, so I left it.

Short version: It didn't work.

Thanks for the feedback Dinger... much appreciated.

Camera work:
One huge fault of this mission is that it's very cutscene heavy. I obviously tried to do a bit much with the story, and ended up with a lot of dialog and cutscenes (I'm not doing that again :P). Moving camera shots help to add interest and action, and long cutscenes need that ;)
I did zoom a bit, when necessary. You really don't want to use zooming too much (one of the first things you'll get told in a film class), as it can be disorientating. I felt I used it when appropriate though. However I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on specific scenes/shots, if you'd care to give it :)

Minefield Issues:
Hmm... had you retry'ed at all?
One thing I found is that retrying repeatedly had all sorts of ill effects sometimes.
The engineers use an @unitready call, so I'm not sure why they stopped. It's possible for them to 'miss' a mine (but it gets removed later anyway), but they shouldn't just stop. I could add a bit of fallback code to make sure they don't stop...
* Sui writes that down :)

As far as the player being able to call the engineers... yeah, I could have put that in. However you have to draw the line somewhere with what the player can and can't do. To script every possibility would take forever, not to mention skyrocket the (already absurdly high) number of voices I'd need to get to cover all the situations ;)

Anyway, thanks for your criticism mate. It's much appreciated, and will help me make my next mission better :)

GAZ NZ

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #2 on: 22 Sep 2003, 12:48:06 »
Using Jam Addons would be nicer.
Else great work.

Offline Batdog

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #3 on: 22 Sep 2003, 15:51:38 »
GAZ NZ. Jam is about 6mb big and Sui would get lower than a 9 for inproper use of addons he would get a 8.

And Sui. Kick arse work. Hard and a challegne. Just the way i like it.
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Offline dmakatra

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #4 on: 22 Sep 2003, 16:36:14 »
Great Mission Sui! I got to the counterattack, but then it gets all laggy. Gonna play it through with my new comp I'll get in November.

But what about adding custom music? It would be so much more cooler since you gto so many cutscenes.

But don't add any addons, it works perfectly now!

GJ!

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

Offline Kronzky

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #5 on: 22 Sep 2003, 16:42:55 »
Great mission, Sui.
I really enjoyed playing it, and spent quite a bit of time with it.
It definitely deserves a 9 (or a 9.5 if that was possible), but there still were a few bugs, or areas for improvement, left in it.

I won't bother listing all the great things in it - they're obvious to everyone. But here's what came across my mind when playing it:

The intro often has very long pauses between the sentences of whoever is briefing you. In an already long intro you may want to tighten that whole sequence up a little.

There are millions of tents (very nice view!), but only something like 10 people milling around. I know this is probably a performance issue, but since it's only the intro it probably would've been better to have some laggy crowds, rather than a few lost guys that are really fast.

As far as the mine sequence is concerned - I agree with Dinger in that it should involve some skill and consequences. They should be randomly placed over a certain area, and not sticking out like a sore thumb. Don't know if it's possible to place them halfway underground, or if one could just make the ground look different somehow, but them lying there as obvious as this would probably not very realistic. Also, the player should be able to call in the engineers when he figures he found'em all. And if he didn't - well, then Booom...
Also, the mood during the mine sweeping process seems a bit too cheerful. It sounds more like an Easter Egg hunt: "Hey, I found a mine!", "Look! There's another one!", etc. I would imagine this to be a very tense situation, with not too much excited shouting. (But then again, I've never been one a mine sweeping team. So what do I know...)
Once, when I played it, the engineers only cleared about half of them, and the game sort of got stuck at that point.

Once I got into town, this is what happened:
First time I played it, there were two waves of attacks coming from three directions, rather quickly after one another, and very tough. I survived, but they took over the town, and I lost. Fair enough...
Second time around the first attack came at about the same time, but the other two groups were hanging around in their initial positions forever. I found a sniper gun and picked a few of them off from a distance, but since I couldn't really leave town, there was no way for me to actually approach them, in order to wipe'em out. They did slowly trickly in, though. A few guys first, then some more, then the other groups. So this way it was a piece of cake dealing with them. I finished with something like 8 of my guys alive, as well as the M1A1 and about 7 other units still on their feet at the end. (And I'm sure that wasn't because of my outstanding effort!)

But now to my main beef with the mission.
I don't like being courtmarshalled...
I find that limiting the player to only stay within a specified range is somehow again the 'spirit' of OFP. The great thing about this game is that you can 'go anywhere, do anything', and nothing's keeping you back. That I can't leave town to pro-actively prevent the attacks, I found very annoying. If that turns out to be a bad idea - well, then let me get killed in the process. Let them take over the town while I mill around in the woods, but don't kill me for just trying something else. By so severly restricting the player's movement, you kill off a lot of potential replay value (since there's really only one way it now can be played).
I know, it a lot more of a pain to program, if you can't fully predict where the player might go, or what kind of crazy strategies he might try. But so what, if someone actually finds a loophole somewhere to successfully exploit some weakness in the mission. That can and does happen in real life. If someone is creative enough to come up with a plan that the mission planner didn't foresee, then good for him... Then he deserves that win just as much as someone who is just good at fighing battles.
Yes, it may not be realistic to allow the player to do anything that comes into his head. But I guess that's why we're playing a game, rather than actually joining the army. You wanna have the good aspects of reality in a game, but leave out the annoying ones...


Two more minor points, and then I'm done.

There were U.S. MASH tents in Russian Larche.

The player should be able to turn off the music that plays during the actual game.


And I know, I should've brought up these points during beta testing. But even though I noticed the big discussion going on in the pr0n thread, I never bothered opening it, since I didn't expect to actually find an interesting mission behind a subject like that. (Guess that marketing ploy somehow misfired...)

But thanks anyway for a phantastic mission!
« Last Edit: 22 Sep 2003, 17:01:15 by Kronzky »

Offline toadlife

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #6 on: 22 Sep 2003, 20:07:32 »
I never experienced any bugs with the mines part of the mission, even with the one beta version I played many months ago.

The only criticisms I have are the looooooooong cutscenes.  No matter how well they are done (and they are done well), more than a few minutes of cutscenes in any mission will drive impatient ol' me nuts.

As for the bugs people have reported, I'd bet this is partly a product of the game being buggy (savegame bugs anyone?), and partly a product of Sui just making things too damn complicated.  The dilema of every knowledgeable mission editor is where to draw the line between changing parts of the game via fancy programming and just letting the game do what it was designed to do.

Anyhoo, I would give it a 9/10 (9.5 if you could) regardless of whether or not there were any bugs in the mission. NOt a 10, but still better than 99.9999% of all of the other OFP missions. :)

If I get time I'll actually play the version of the mission in a MD, and perhaps I can give some better feedback on the release version.
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Offline dmakatra

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #7 on: 22 Sep 2003, 21:04:40 »
OK, played through the worst of the lag by hiding in a house. Then I took out the remenant forces. Here's what I noticed that you could change:

  • The tanks just rolled in, you took out the BMPs and the T72s quite fast while the infatry was slowing down and it took a while until you came in contact with them.
  • The infatry from south was MUCH more slower than the infatry from west. I ran around for about 5 mins searching for the last enemy, and then, after 5 mins I heard gunshots from remenant south infatry(around a squad). If I were one of them I would've run my ass off.
  • The mission's VERY easy, even though it's laggy for me. And "substained heavy losses" my arse! I had my whole squad intact, the Abram was damaged but active. Bravo was OK, Charlie had substained heavy casulties but both Bradleys were in status white.
  • Why wasn't my reinforcements in the assault? Would've been a lot easier then.
  • Any1 else noticed this bug? My in-mission-but-still-outro cutscene had radio activated!!!
All in all, this is a VERY good mission, with good atmosphere, good camera shots, good scripting(like that M2 with HE rounds), great recorded voices(which one of em is macca?), and mostly, it's VERY POLISHED. These 5 "bugs" was the only negative(xept the lag) I found, and trust me, I can find around 10-15 on a good 9/10!

VGJ!!

:beat: *Gets Impressed* :beat:
« Last Edit: 22 Sep 2003, 21:05:17 by The real Armstrong »

Offline Dinger

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #8 on: 22 Sep 2003, 21:32:02 »
Heh.
Cutscenes are a pain in the butt to do, and by the length and complexity of these, I just know Sui spent weeks working on them.
Yes, I agree you want to use Zooms sparingly.  But I'll add the "flying camera" needs a sparing use as well, and for the same reason: it makes the viewer consciously aware of the camera and its motions.
In any case, there's a difference between zooming and changing the tight FOV.  What I'm arguing for I guess is that a few of these shots could be taken out and replaced with a static camera at different FOVs.



Okay, I'll give you the ideas on how I'd do it.  This is your project, so I expect you to do it your own way; but since you asked for specific shots, here's my take :)  .

For example in the intro cutscene, you introduce the NATO camp and Larche via a flying camera at what looks to me to be .7 FOV.

Let's see if I can remember the NATO sequence:

A) Camera Flies to LST, then turns inland and flies to shore, overflies camp, making a few left and right turns.
B) a few left -to-right moving camera shots on the ground (one a reverse angle of the other)
C) a camera moving to the rear shot on the ground, tracking a truck


A) is probably worth keeping, but I'd simplify it a bit (=cut down on the swerves. make it look like a high-speed flyby of the camp).
but I think you might get a slightly less unsettling perspective of the camp by swapping out some of the follow-on moving camera shots (B and C) for a sequence of static ones.  I'm a sucker for Wide-Angle/Normal/CU/ECU progressions, but you don't have to take my pedantry.


For Larche, I might suggest something a little different.  The flying camera there is a little problematic, since it muddles the voice. We see the observer: we expect to see what he sees.  Then the camera flies to the town and shows us more.  I'm a fan of the cliche'd here:
Start with a static shot of the observer from the front (FOV ca .5) .  If you can make him keep the field glasses on his face, great.  Cut to a reverse angle, over the shoulder, FOV of 1 or so. (maybe less -- you want to be able to make out larche and ants down there).  cutrsc the cheezy binos and pan across the action, finishing on some recognizable structure (like the last house on the main street).  Cut to a FOV .7 shot from that house, panning on the activity.

---


Okay, now here's a suggestion you can use.  The last shot of the intro ("here's a hard copy") would benefit greatly from a telephoto FOV (maybe .3?) to compress the distance between the pair, and the helicopter in the background.  Actually, in general don't be afraid to back the camera up and use telephoto on the dialogs.
(or in general.  Was just watching BHD again the other night, and the number of telephoto shots is pretty impressive)

---
I have no problem with long cutscenes provided A) they're done well, B) savegames are stationed around them and C) they occur at appropriate times in the mission.  I think these criteria have been fulfilled.

@unitready: maybe a timeout feature too then.


On retries:

if you haven't, check the thread on the fp1985 forums concerning the savegame bugs.  we've isolated a few of them now.
one thing: you shouldn't use the reserved variable time for anything, at least not without a "bandaid", like:

Code: [Select]
_hack = 0
TimeOffset = 0
#loop
~1
if (_hack < time) then {_hack = time} else {TimeOffset = TimeOffset + _hack; _hack = time}
goto "loop"

Then use time + TimeOffset for all your time functions.
« Last Edit: 22 Sep 2003, 21:32:32 by Dinger »
Dinger/Cfit

Offline Dinger

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #9 on: 22 Sep 2003, 21:48:19 »
Okay, another one:
the setacctime on the Abrams hitting the mine doesn't work cinematically, because there's no way of noticing that time has stopped before the mine is hit.  Maybe this would work by swinging the camera around at high speed from the flank to infront of the tank and back around to the other side.  As it approaches the front, the mine is visible and the tank is about to hit it.  Jump to acctime -- the camera movement slows down, cueing the viewer into the slo-mo -- and chop the music.  Watch the moment of explosion slowly, then speed up as you swing around the other side.

(Again, it's just an idea of how to do it; but something has to tell me that the reason why the tank is tilted on its front treads is because time has stopped).
Dinger/Cfit

Offline Dinger

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #10 on: 22 Sep 2003, 23:26:33 »
Okay, I now played it through.

"Easy"? I thought the difficulty level was about right.  Again, keep the core mission simple -- I think that's been done.
The outro cutscene again had 2-3 too many flying cameras for me.  But it also had some pretty cool shots.  And the ammo dump going off -- I'm not sure how it relates to the mission, but it looks cool. (would have liked to have seen the OH-58 on the other side of the crest with just the laser designator popping overhead, but you take what you can get ;) )

The court-martial zone: well, it _is_ somewhat important.  The OFP maps are generally bigger than the area of operations we can populate.
I would consider getting rid of the soviet sniper.  I got his rifle and just picked off the reds at 600m.

(oh nice job on the blue text for the voice-over animated map.  Another trick for those who don't want to define the text in the description.ext is to cover the whole map with a transparent grey marker)
Dinger/Cfit

Captain Winters

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #11 on: 23 Sep 2003, 03:52:41 »
Yes, definately. The mission was excellent. We're talking over in the admins foruims about it now... I think  ::) Ahh< i'll go see. If not I'll start a thread about it. I forgot about having to discuss with other reivewers  :-X My bad!  :) I'll be bak son

Tanks!  8)

Offline Sui

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #12 on: 23 Sep 2003, 05:18:34 »
* Sui rubs hands together in delight

Excellent guys, one thing I really appreciate is detailed feedback. :)

As we're all amateurs, OFP editing will always be a learning experience. Everything said here will go towards making my next mission better than this one.

Kronzky:
Good thoughts on the intro... I'd be keen to add more motion (guys instead of static objects) to the scene, but as you say performance can be an issue if not careful.

The mine sequence... as far as the scripting angle goes, you can't use distance/setpos/getpos commands on editor placed mines. They are co-located with invisibe H's for the purposes of the script. This makes randomization hard.
Also, I felt it would annoy the player unduely if they had to spend 10 minutes hunting around for one last mine, which happened to be under a bush or something.
I was never going to let the tanks roll through and get blown up, as that would weaken the platoon at Larche, and require yet another scripted alternative...

CourtMarshalling... you're right, OFP is great as far as player freedom is concerned. However in this mission the player is in the role of a (low ranking) squad sergeant. They don't have the authority to tell the platoon where to defend from, and have to take their instructions from the Lt. (no matter how tactically unsound they may be ;D).
Realistically, if the player decided to go off and do their own thing they'd get castrated, as they'd be putting the lives of the whole platoon in danger by not doing their duty ;)

Toady:
I've cut a couple of scenes out in the Release version, and tightened up the dialog a bit to shorten the scenes. You're dead right though, it is still far to cutscene heavy. (A mistake I won't be making again).

Armstrong:
The radio bug... In the script I enableradio false about 3 times. I can't for the life of me work out why it won't turn off! I even make the player join a null group!! I think it's just one of those things...

Dinger:
You bloody legend. Thanks for taking the time to go into specifics for me, I really appreciate your opinion :)

The flying camera... damn good point. I think I did go a tad overboard... maybe at the time I was impressed with the BIS smoke script I just found or something ;D
I'll definately keep that in mind for the future.

I'm generally not too keen on using high (or should that be low??) FOV values, as the camera tends to go annimorphic (sp??)... looks a little wierd.

Anyway, thanks for your opinion. It's always good to hear how someone else would have done it.

Savegame bugs... yes I'm watching that thread with great interest. I had all sorts of problems... weaponholders disappearing, weapon textures going transparent, syncing going nuts (I had to get rid of waypoint syncing and use times instead)... no end of headaches.

Thanks for your input everybody. I'm always keen to hear more feedback, if anyone cares to write some for me :)

[size=0.5]Edit: quick thought:[/size]
I've recently started putting 'redundancy' conditions on @ conditions. I also tend to use daytime as opposed to time. Something like this:

Code: [Select]
#GoBack
lt sidechat "Get over here, Sergeant. I need you to polish my boots"
_now = (daytime + (60/3600))
@ (player distance lt < 10) or (daytime > _now)
? (daytime > _now): goto "GoBack"
player playmove "FXlickboots"

So the @ condition will expire after 60 seconds there. That will loop back around, but you can add conditions to prevent the script hanging...

OFP has the annoying habit of going wrong when it shouldn't sometimes :)
« Last Edit: 23 Sep 2003, 05:40:52 by Sui »

Offline Batdog

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #13 on: 23 Sep 2003, 05:53:49 »
Yo Captiano Winters. In your review what was the part about the enginer stepping on a mine and blowing him to kingdom come. I never saw that and i played the mission times. Again Sui great work :cheers:
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RP

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #14 on: 23 Sep 2003, 23:05:17 »
Great work Sui!

There's one thing i absolutly love about this mission: atmosphere!
And that, thanks to the (maybe a litle bit long, but very well made) cutscenes. It realy makes you feel part of something bigger.

I was expecting an ambush near the mine field, and that turned to be a minor disapointment, but i understand. If the assaulting west force was to sustain severe losses, it would be much harder (or maybe impossible) to size and hold the town.

When holding the town, i expected much more enemy infantry, but maybe that's just bloody me.

I found no bugs so far (played it only once, besides the beta version), and i think it shurely deserves a 9.
I only whish it was a longer and bigger mission.

It's one of the best i ever played, and i've played alot of them!

Captain Winters

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #15 on: 24 Sep 2003, 01:06:00 »
Yo rattin? What u be talkin bout? After u discover da mines da last one acidently trips n it sends the medic flyin  ::) :)
btw- were in a heated debat over dis mission in the admins forums... kk we'll we all think its awsome we're just waiting to close the votin


Tanks! 8)

Offline Sui

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #16 on: 24 Sep 2003, 01:26:30 »
Yo rattin? What u be talkin bout? After u discover da mines da last one acidently trips n it sends the medic flyin  ::) :)

Not always Cap'in ;)

That's one of me easter eggs... ya'har... ;D
There be a few more in there, if ye are of a mind to be lookin

Captain Winters

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #17 on: 24 Sep 2003, 01:46:28 »
Wow  :o NICE EASTER EGG! DAMNNN!!!

Tanks!  8)

Offline Kurayami

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #18 on: 25 Sep 2003, 00:31:59 »
I gave this mission a shot because of  the glowing review. My comments:

Very nice cutscene work. Very well done. There are too many missions with pointless, boring cutscenes. This isn't one of them.

I have a gripe with the minefield sequence, though. The mission won't advance beyond it. I've tried twice to no avail. I get the message about finding all of the mines. The engineers move in and clear them. I'm told to mount up.... and nothing happens. At all. The convoy just sits there and the mission doesn't progress.

I'd really like to see that fixed. I'm rather impressed by what I'm able to play.

Homefry31464

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #19 on: 25 Sep 2003, 01:22:45 »
Wow, thats about all I can say.  This mission has everything, and then some.  I experianced no bugs whatsoever, and really enjoyed this mission.  I'd give it a 10.  Loved it.  Eh, the minefield took a while, but it was the suspence and anticipation of whoopin' some butt.  What happens if I run up to the observer??  Can't play it right now so I am kind of wondering.

RP

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #20 on: 27 Sep 2003, 06:19:22 »
@ Kurayami:
yup, it hapened to me once, when i was playing the beta version.
Never hapened again, not with the beta, or with the final release...
maybe just one of thouse OFP things...

Offline Sui

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #21 on: 28 Sep 2003, 01:24:05 »
Thanks guys :)

Kurayami: Hmm... not good. Just out of curiosity, what OFP version are you running, and what addons did you have loaded at the time?

max_killer_payne

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #22 on: 28 Sep 2003, 21:24:36 »
The medic thing just happened  ;D LOL!! Did you get the inspiration for that from Medal Of Honor: Frontline on the opening D-Day mission?? And I want that damn sequel now!!  ;D  ;D  8)

RP

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Re:Facile Ground Feedback
« Reply #23 on: 03 Nov 2003, 03:41:58 »
OK,i know this is late, but only a couple of thoughts:

as i see it, fun factor only hapens after the "mine clear thingy".
Before that, what we have is a nice piece of cutscenes, followed by a very well scripted mine clearence sequence.
Did i mentioned the fabulous intro cutscene?
It was a very well done job , because it sets up the mood so well, that one gets the feeeling of being part of something bigger than your litle team!
All considered, i would give it an 8/10, scoring 9 at cutscenes and scripting.

cheeers, RP.