(Review Completed) [SP] Dustbowl

[MrN]

Hi.

First public mission long time lurker, have now decided to jump in.

The overview is pants I know and the briefing is a little dry maybe, but it should all be there. I don't have any image editing software at the moment so a picture is a tad difficult. Edited on 1.96.

It is addon-heavy I'm afraid, so, sorry for the 56k'ers.

Links:
Mapfact Barracks (3.7mb)
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/unofaddons2/Baracken1_5.zip
ftp://www.gamezone.cz/ofpd/unofaddons2/Baracken1_5.zip

Generic Middle East Rebels (3.6mb)
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/unofaddons2/jjr_updated_rebels_v11.rar
ftp://www.gamezone.cz/ofpd/unofaddons2/jjr_updated_rebels_v11.rar

BAS Delta/Ranger v1.55 (15.2mb or 2.35mb for patch)
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/unofaddons2/bas_dera_v1_55.rar
ftp://www.gamezone.cz/ofpd/unofaddons2/bas_dera_v1_55.rar
or the patch for people who have version 1.5
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/unofaddons2/bas_dera_v1_55_patch.rar
ftp://www.gamezone.cz/ofpd/unofaddons2/bas_dera_v1_55_patch.rar

Bas MH60 (22.8mb)
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/unofaddons2/BAS_429_BAS_Blackhawks1_SOAR2_JAM1.zip

BAS Tonal island + OPFOR (115mb)
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/islands2/bas_isleopfor1.2.rar

Updated CAT Afghanistan Island (17mb)
ftp://www.gamezone.cz:8021/ofpd/islands2/CAT_Afghanistan_Revisited.rar
ftp://www.gamezone.cz/ofpd/islands2/CAT_Afghanistan_Revisited.rar

Editor Update 102 (80kb)
http://www.ofpec.com/includes/download2.php?id=276

I originally designed this as an MP coop mission but it's also playable as a single mission. This is a Black-Op style mission where you are the leader.  The storyline is non existent really, get in, get the pilot, get out. But I've tried to at least create an atmosphere. At the moment it's not playable in Cadet mode, MP habit. If this causes problems I'll remove the script but personally it's Vet all the way for me.

It should have just enough bad guys to keep you on your toes (hopefully) and they're using General Baron's infoshare script and Keycats grouplink script. A scary combination!


Linkage (1.05mb):
http://rapidshare.de/files/1596331/co9__dustbowl.CATIntro.zip.html

*Update*
http://rapidshare.de/files/2042547/dustbowlv13.zip.html

Edit: This mission has been reviewed and is available from the Missions Depot.

[Mikero]

God in Heaven! This one's a ball tearer folks. Forget about testing it, just PLAY the damn thing.

OFP1.96, bench 5895, vetmode, no super ai

played strictly in mods folder

Readme:

none. This must be done because of the large addon list. The urls supplied in the forum were professionally done, all links 'worked' (but I dont download from the Czech site, too much pain)

Overview:

fine for a beta. All this stuff belongs on a 2nd page.

missing revision number and author advertising

Intro:

none i could detect

missing

ICP_effects\car.sqs

this is *most likely* to be me, i dont allow anims in the ofp folders (far too much pain as a beta tester)

Briefing:

map:

umm aren't the two hmmv targets supposed to be green?

Plan:

hmmm. This is interesting format double para, it reads well and I know why you did this, to force all objectives on same-page.

However, imho, objectives need to be 1st page and a 'war situation' elsewhere. The reason is player will always do a fast 'M'ap key when there's so much going to happen. Good all the same.

Have now played mission and objectives MUST be on first page.

Be careful of supplying too much detail to the objective targets. They border on being story, not objective.

Notes:

not traditional, but rather interesting info.

Gear/Group

hmm, that looks like a LOT of carefully thought out stuff by author, this is beginning to look good. If he cares here, he cares about the mission too. Launch button pressed....

Mission:

God damn, this is bloody clever stuff. You've been in one, haven't you author. This is wowie wow. Always amazes me that this poor old engine can authenticate things so well.

There's a slight problem, perhaps grizzled beta tester, perhaps genuine alarm, the initial thought is BUG FREEZE. What you need to do is this:

1st line first sentence to be SURE Joe Grunt reads it in briefing.

"It's pitch black, you're in a sandstorm and things will get worse". this is essential to prevent alarm.

Phew, if mission turns to mud now, I am going to go beserk with frustration...

HOLY CRAP this is good. Cheatsaves involved, 3 o'clock loons kill half of me, I get the nasties at the campfire (possibly a fuel depot), bad bastard on roof kills more of me. The noise is driving me CRAZY (good)

Get big bad guy first simply because he was in trajectory. The mistake you make is trying to linearise a small town. It cannot be done, so don't try. State clearly in briefing that all objectives are in no particular order (except last obvoiously) Make it wordy, build it into storyline, but make sure player doesn't feel obligated to do something 'first', otherwise she will have a sense of failure each time she succeeds

pilot should be injured

last loon was hidden hidden in bush making freeing the pilot a tough one. He just stood there. Not good.


The (2) obectives for pilot were confusing and difficult to follow. I think what you need here is another one to simply, FIND THE PILOT!

The objectives MUST be on 1st page for this mission. A total, absolute must.

Lag was very noticeable as loons appeared. This was dissapointing, it spoilt atmoshpere considerably (to say nothing of the cheatsaves required in order to survive because I couldn't swing me fast enough left and right)

Flares were a little confusing. We have sandstorm, wind, night, town lighting. Please consider getting rid of these while IN the town. They're good, but impression is buggy (some sort of engine false shadow thing). Actually, the real answer is to change them to a color other than white. Then , it's clearly, not a bug.

I did of course shoot pilot sigh

4:45 getting light. This occurred about time of asking for extraction.

I knew, if I requested it while I was still at pilot's prison fire, as suggested by you, all hell would descend. I waited till I got south of town. If you don't want me doing that, make another construct to stop me.

The hmvs were a comic disaster. It's a fact of life with the ofp engine that ai driving in the presence of enemy causes everything to go out to lunch,, big time. I do not know of any fixes. When I play this again, and that, I am gonna do asap, I will x4 myself back to base. As good, and as thematic as they are, please consider bringing in a single truck that I can drive.

I realise you have problems here because you ambush me, cleverly, half way home.

The only way I made it out of there was to immediately get 9,10,11 back into their veihcles and race them behind me 100meters. In the meantime the rest of us held off the enemy horde for them. Consider then, NOT getting them out of vehicles because they come too close to town (depending on how you play it, I would have been mighty relieved to see them that close if i had played it your way and called them early)

All in all I can see how you choreographed this bit and it's fine, I'm more letting you know the gotcha's of my game play.

Overall:

A ball tearer. An absolutely brilliant mission. Best I've played. (not counting Thob's entirely different world which cannot be rated)

Marred by poor presentation and lag.

No intros or outroes I am aware of.

Rating:

the mission itself is a 9, IF and only if the lag is removed.

The thematic use of the 'island' is a full 10. THIS is what it's all about folks, it's not another backdrop to Houdan with funny looking buildings, this author did something that made it specifically and only this location. It will make any other mission in Afganistan dull if authors simply use new eye candy, same old scenarios.

The mission as a whole however only rates a seven because of the problems mentioned and the very poor presentation (relative to the bang for buck of the mission itself)

[dmakatra]

Well, that's enough for me to download it. As soon as I can smack me away from Fallout 2. Come here little gecko, come here. Come to papa. Aaaah! He bit my leg off! THAT BASTARD!!

Uhm... Yeah... Expect my beta in the afternoon.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:

[Acecombat]

I got lag while playing it , this might be a good co-op but as SP it doesnt cut because the AI team mates of mine who are supposed to be the best of the best 'deltas'   , got owned by a couple of afghan bandits , jeez. Is the enemy AI like all on full skill level with colonel as rank? I didnt check my peeps ranks but they are behaving awefully for a delta squad.

I havent played it in full yet but what i've done so far. My whole team was killed before we even entered the town and then i got killed  .

[Mikero]

My whole team was killed before we even entered the town and then i got killed  .

HELL that will dissapoint the author, you FOUND the town.

 ;D ;D ;D

[Acecombat]

HELL that will dissapoint the author, you FOUND the town.

 ;D ;D ;D

Hehe , one more thing about the AI wierd was that they were able to see/kill my teammates very easily but they wouldnt kill me , even if i was right infront of them .. they were giving priority to my team   , smug bastards  ;D.

[MrN]

Wow, Mikero. Thanks for the generous review.

I'll try and answer some of your points:
It does need a readme granted, but I haven't done one for 2 reasons. The mission isn't finished and I only posted it on the spur of the moment because I've spent too much time fiddling with this and was hoping for feedback about what to tweak.

Overview was done in 5minutes, it sucks, I know. I only did one because I had to!

Briefings aren't my speciality I admit and you completely saw through my ruse of double spacing. I will change this. Again it was done more for necessity. It does appear that this is your main bugbear with the mission. Sorry, again this exercise was more to see if the mission was well received or not. I wasn't expecting your reaction though!  

I have to confess when I'm mucking about in the editor it's more for my benefit than anyone else's, if this sounds selfish it's not meant to, it's only because I want to play with addons! I did this for fun not for glory. Rarely do addons come with any missions anymore, which is a damn shame I feel.

 Which brings me onto Acecombat's point of it being tough, if I'm replaying a mission again and again it has to be reasonably unpredictable, which is where the Grouplink script comes in. It does make things more random and reactive but also a damn sight tougher!   The Infoshare script seems to be the icing on the cake.   I haven't experienced the problem of the AI only targeting the squad and not me, quite the opposite normally!

I would consider using Bremmers script on the players' squad if people find this too hard.  That normally livens things up a bit.

The missing  "ICP_effects\car.sqs" was completely my fault, I was using it but changed my mind and didn't remove the init line. Doh! Therefore you missed the short intro, which brings me onto your point about ""It's pitch black, you're in a sandstorm and things will get worse". this is essential to prevent alarm.". You are in fact supposed to be starting in a parachute!

"The mistake you make is trying to linearise a small town."
Didn't think I hadâ€Â¦hmmmm.

The lag problem is disappointing, I was hoping that using loads of fog would help combat this. I'm spawning groups in but not loads and loads. Of course it could be because I know where they are coming from and am wiping them out, where as they might be building up if not taken out. How long was your game time? I also wonder if the sandstorm/sound effect is getting laggier as time goes on. I could reduce the amount of sand but I love the effect too much. Might have to be done thoughâ€Â¦

Flares will be changed, there was something unsettling about those but I hadn't put my finger on it. Thanks!  :thumbsup:

The extraction was a bit of a last minute thing really, I'm still not convinced, although as you witnessed 3 HMMWV's charging in and getting wiped out straight away does have a certain comic charm if you're watching itâ€Â¦

My thinking of the HMMWV's was that if the whole group is in a truck, 1 RPG= game over and it would be a dull drive home if there were no bad guys! I do realise though, that AI and cars are not a happy marriage. However there are trucks in the town if you'd rather use thoseâ€Â¦ I might have to tweak the triggers/objectives thoughâ€Â¦

The pilot is a tricky one too, lying him down, injuring him and forgetting the animation might be the way forward on thisâ€Â¦but being the bastard I am I like having a loon in the bush. I might give him a 50% probability just for giggles instead.

I'm also considering adding an additional objective to recover the blackbox from the chopper. Any views?
Thanks for trying it. I'll go tinker and try again.

[Mikero]

Wow, Mikero. Thanks for the generous review.

Don't you worry about that author. I don't give encouragement awards. I get many well-deserved brickbats in my face because of it, but my integrity remains. This is better than good, and I'm going to be 90% on the money here.

This is the payback mission. The one all beta testers dream of getting, the one that says "I was here when it happened", the reward for all of my hard work with other ones.

>Readme

as MacGuba correctly points out, the readme is the forum itself. I am obligated to point out it is now missing for the release.

>Overview

you will discover, lurker, that by working one in now, not before, all the niggles you have, back of your mind, will be fixed up in the mission itself. It's a way of bringing the subconcious to the front. It works.

Your mission is finished. It is complete, it works. Now is the time to fix, not fiddle with it.

>starting in a parachute!

I did, it was god awful brilliant. it was pitch black and scared sh*tless. Please read my post again. The problem you have is a percieved 'black screen of death'

You dont change that terrifying drop, you change the briefing to include it. The situational awareness you introduced (zoom to fire) was brilliant. Why? Because you didn't hold my hand,  didn't overdo it. If I missed it, welll.....

I don't know if by terrible misfortune and randomness I landed on a mountain that I could not walk on, but I hope to god you did that deliberately.

"The mistake you make is trying to linearise a small town."
Didn't think I hadâ€Â¦hmmmm.

Precisely, you did NOT. But everything briefing wise says you DID. Make it plain as day in the breifing that no one objective has priority. It cannot.

"This is an emergency drop soldier, the weather's foul, HQ are desperate. We have no choice but to send your squad  in, now, immediately". We have no visuals, no intel for you, but you must rescue our pilot. We need him and his information back and safe."

"We do know that their leader is /about to ransom, /about to interrogate, /about to execute our pilot. The leader's full bodyguard will be in evidence. You must eliminate him in case the pilot's already talked"

The best we can do is bring up some vehicles for you when it's all over.

Here are your objectives in no particular order:

I don't suggest you copy verbatim, I suggest you understand the construct of what I said above.

Your mission is brilliant, flesh it out.

>Lag

it *only* occured when I was after last single loon. I'd swing into them, the lag would kick in, which indicated some sort of spawn happening elsewhere. Easy fix. Don't spawn until zero, when it doesn't matter. In fact, dont spawn. Just put the buggers so far away on waypoints that I wouldn't, couldn't, notice.

another blackbox objective is perfectly fine. Put the chopper halfway home INSTEAD of ambusing us.

scrap the vehicles entirely. (and that is *only* a suggestion). I want that last firefight waiting for something south of town, and that, mercifully is your problem, not mine. But vehicles plural wont cut the cake unless you remove all enemy ai from the vicinity.

I LOVED the waiting for the vehicles. I HATED the vehicles. Over to you.

Footnote:

you mention scripts and things, which you have to do, I have intentionally avoided mentioning, specifically, the biggie, the thing that makes this mission so powerful, I don't want to spoil the surprise for other testers, just yet.

[XCess]

never ever ever keep vehicles in the same group, they don't like it. REALLY don't like it, thanks to wanting to keep formation all the time. Keep them in fomration by scripting, and set the drivers to careless and they should behave just how you want them to.... I think  

[456820]

the link for the mission doesnt seem to work for me is there another link because from the reviews this sounds like a great mission and im eager to test it

[Mikero]

I'm eager to test it

You may come to regret that comment  

If you have pets, be considerate and put them safely away. Fido has not recovered yet and missed teatime twice.
---
off topic and Artec will just have to give me a smack.

Early news folks you read it here first. I'm setting up a small website dedicated for beta testers of ofpec so that they can grab both addons and missions as they become available.

I have no intentions of making it an ofp wannabe, simply a repository of needed stuff and specific to the needs of testing a beta. If any of you have specific requests, needs, wants or suggestions please feel free. For starters i will supply ftp and http download access.

Please dont suggest eye candy, nor forums, the site is not intended to compete with anyone. It's primary purpose will be to supply the necessaries to get a mission tested. That will be, it's only focus, and it will primarily benfit those of you in the southern hemisphere. (chile / argentina excepted)

The ofpec bandwidth is saturated enough as it is, to say nothing of the huge gigaload of archives.

Countdown: 3 days. If people stop uploading these bloody missions to test ;D

[Sui]

I'm with Mike... this mission's got a lot of grit. And not just because it's so damn sandy ;D

I played with a 6000 benchmark, no addons apart from listed and ECP 1.075(a).
Didn't suffer any CPU slow-down at any stage as far as I could tell.

I've got a few points I found, but please bear in mind that these are coming from a (mainly) single player of OFP. I don't get online much...

Overview

• Spice up the text a bit more, and maybe add a picture. The overview is supposed to sell your mission... to scream "PLAY ME!!"
• Addons should be listed in the readme rather than the overview
• However if you're aiming at a MP audience rather than SP, obviously ignore the above

Briefing

• The paragraphing was good as it made the briefing easy to read. However the objectives should definitely be on the first page. If you need to create another briefing section (via a link) I suggest doing that, or even put the mission detail in the notes section.
  
• Weapons selection! Not sure how much of an issue this would be if it was MP rather than SP, but you limit the player's options by not providing a choice of hardware. I would have been much more comfortable with my trusty underslung
• A bit of background info on who I am would have been nice. As far as I knew, I was just 'a guy' going in to get the pilot out. I had no idea who my squad was (apart from checking the group tab).
• In relation to above, both your Automatic weapons end up on the same side of the squad formation (Due to both of them being on even number units). Maybe swap them around a bit to give an even spread of fire?
• Also mentioning the weather would be good as well. It had a fairly large impact on the mission, I'd say :)

Mission

• Right at the start of the opening scene, there is a brief flash of the player unit. To get rid of that, run your cutscene script from the player's init line (as it is always executed first).
• Good use of music in the opening scene... really set the mood.
• Some retry points would be nice (again, not applicable to MP though).
• The atmosphere was BRILLIANT. The poor visibility and sand made for real seat-of-the-pants action. The amount of times bad guys materialized out of the sand and scared the shite out of me were too many to count ;D
• I moved around to come at the town from the North, moving one of my fire teams up to overwatch and entered the town. Took care of some of the static guys myself, and my team mopped up the patrols. Cleared the building with the leader in it, and got an objective ticked off.
• Then I moved West and got the pilot. It was then South to the extraction point.
• I suggest changing the name of Radio Alpha to something a bit more specific, "Call for pick Up" or something.
• One other thing you could add to really ratchet up the tension would be the odd radio call. These would be much better at hints when it comes to communicating mission events.
• Jumped in the Hummers, and drove off to the South. My god, what a gauntlet... that drive was awesome. RPGs and tracers flying everywhere... I got through ok with nothing worse than bullet holes, though the trailing Hummer got hit by an RPG.
  Talk about suspense!!

This mission is well put together, though has a few ommissions that I could see. However I'm not sure that they really need to be corrected if you're aiming at a MP release rather than SP.

I would have liked to see less static guys and more patrols (apart from the guys on the roofs, they were brilliant :) ), but it still played damn well the way it was.
Thanks for sharing... and well done :)

[Mikero]

I can't get enough of this mission.

2nd time through I noticed the music!!! (had the volume turned down because of some awful battle music played elsewhere). This time, the 2 x snipers found us.

this time two of my hmmvs were destroyed long before they got to me. Decided to go on foot. WHat a battle. I never knew, never ever knew, when the next lot would appear, got zapped thinking it was all over because the sandstorm stopped. Their appearances are completely non linear. Huge thank you for that.

I have never ever been relieved to see a squad of friendlies ever before, any other mission. I could have kissed them as they came out of the dust.

another bug

"missing sound: whistle". This occured during final cutscene.

Many.most? of the buildings are incomplete. It is a little dissappointing to climb all the way up and drop through the roof.

@sui
Lag remains, i checked again. Our benchmarks are similar but I only have 500 meg ram, is this the issue?

[dmakatra]

OVERVIEW:
Seperate the description text from the addon requirements. It needs a picture as well.
INTRO:
None.
BRIEFING:
Script \ICP_effects\car.sqs not found. Que?
It was fine, but if you could make it more "militarish" that'd be great. Like "At 0815 hours our chopper was downed by heavy militia AA fire over Baghlan. The gunner was reported KIA, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah."
No weapons selection? Kinda sucks doesn't it?
I'd remove the handguns as AI is too stupid to use 'em anyhow.
My guys are Deltas and they are recruits/novices? Aren't Deltas supposed to be like the eliteness of the US Army?
MISSION:
Make that the intro instead. I like the music though. It's cool. Though I wouldn't exactley jumped in this weather... You might want to insert me by truck instead or something.
Since you're using grouplinks and shit you might wanna make the baddies shout stuff when they spot the player.
The dudes on the rooftops were nasty. (Un)fortunatley, the AI can't handle that stuff very well so they went down quite fast.
Surprise, surprise, my squad got massacared. Leaving me once again to take on another whole mission. You have to boost their skill man.
I got up on a roof and started picking off the bad guys. I see you're using handguns on the baddies as well. Not something I recommend as they are too stupid to use them.
Why do I need Tonal to play this map?
Oi, dinner's ready. Finish later.

:beat: *Gets Shot* :beat:
Are that sandstorm made by you or is it the island? It looks bloody cool anyway.

[456820]

by any chance could anyone email/pm me with the actual mission because the link doesnt work at all and i downloaded all the addons and this sounds great