(Review Completed) [SP] Zombie Outbreak Simulation

[Mikero]

@Trapper

I reckon I've found the 'problem' with this mission. It's your simulation, not ours. We don't have anything to do but play along according to your rules, and the outcome isn't a win. We could let all the civilians die for all it matters. It's a definition of end game. That's all, and that's fine.

You're not playing fair with us. We too, need to simulate things just like you. Right now, we're bit players, spectators, to a rather interesting simulation that you made, not u and we dont have any big part to play.

For instance, we need to simulate our own events. We need surprises like Town A has a green bottle of sulphur, and if we drive to town B we can mix it with product X and 'simulate' a protection corridor, an antidote to the zombies, a safety zone. We need to have strategies of our own instead of the dreary wait for the civils to load. We need to open a box and discover it's increased zombie levels, blow up a house to decrease them.

We need to move convoys, to make our own game simulation on top of yours.

Otherwise, where's the fun? I might as well go and buy an ant colony and watch that simulate.

We have to have reasons to hate the zombies, we have to have reasons to desperately want to save civilians. Naked Nuns for instance. Give us something to DO to make us part of the outcome. Right now it's totally rigid in structure with nothing for us to CREATE on our own.

Why supply us weapons at all? Let us hunt for them. A reward for even bothering to travel to town Z.

[Cheetah]

A major problem in this mission is that the zombies don't scare me. Really, I _LIKE_ seeing zombies, I have fun doing that. It's just that we have to be overrun with zombies, get low on ammo and be desperate. Try to find ammo in village Y or heavier weapons in town Z. Health packs are hidden at a hospital, thing like these, like Mikero says make the mission better.

It's boring to wait for the convoy to pick the civilians up. Not something I like to do, it's my time and I want something to do. I'd choose a mission with action all the time, like attacking a town over this one. Although this one might be bigger, why? It's missing some major, important things. Just think about it, I didn't have anything to do while waiting for the convoys. I left some teammates at town and went further, deeper into the island myself. But there was a time, quite fast that I had to stop my journey. I had to wait, I was travelling and evacuating too fast for the convoy to keep up.

It's something you should change, make hordes of zombies get to the player if he's somewhere. Make the base under attack by zombies or something. Let the player have some action in this mission, it's not really fun in doing all the travelling only to kill two zombies and save the civilians after 15 minutes of waiting. It's just not how this mission really should be.

This mission desperately needs way more action than it has right now.
About what you pointed out, the AI on a big distance. I could do it in the beginning towns, but later on it's a pain to do. The AI is very hard to control in this kind of mission. You have to pay much attention and the frustration can get to great heights if there's something going wrong.

I could enjoy the mission, but I'm an action seeker. That's what I'd prefer to do. And the chopper might be too easy, but the mission is already easy right now. Please, please make it have a bit more action.

[MachoMan]

I actually liked it, but that's probably my fascination with tech demos.

I do have some suggestions:

• How about making zombies rise from graveyards? That would make moving into towns a lot more interesting!
• Zombies attacking convoys?
• Insert nasty Russians as a challenge.
• More army bases -> overrun by Zombies.
• Real mayhem, burning vehicles, etc.

[Cheetah]

Well, I think this mission is just missing some action.
I did what you asked me to do Trapper and it worked. It's just that later on in this mission, all things tend to become a bit too boring. And some things, like the convoys could get truck later on.

Did some little testing on the zombies and they're really NOT effective. I've tried letting my men fight against them, without using firearms. It took four minutes before two zombies killed one of my men. It took longer to get the second, this is where I stopped my little test. It's just that the zombies need to be in 8+ squads to become a bit dangerous. And in that case they're not really a problem for our firearms. Please look into this, make the zombies a lot harder to deal with, or make us have an ammo shortage so that we fair an encounter with zombies.

I liked what MachoMan suggested, the bases overrun by zombies. The player could try to save them, or get weapons from them that are being guarded by zombies.

[Trapper]

Ok, stop!
I relly appreciate all those feedback finaly, but it's going in the wrong direction.
I don't want to affront you all later, with rejecting many of your suggestions.

In his last post Mikero fully discovered the hidden truth about this mission. - It is an ant colony! And as it is my ant colony, I've set the rules.

It isn't a mainstream OFP(-zombie) mission, and I'll never make it one.
This mission is just a symbiosis of:
- a little java game (link in first post)
- the outbreak "rules" pictured in Night of the living Dead
- Scott Tunstall's Zombie AI
- The default OFP squad control system

The missing fun/interaction, that Mikero is looking for, is located in the direct control of 1st squad and the relative control of 2nd squad (convoys).
It's boring/easy like a marathon run: Everyone can do the distance, fast or slow, maybe with long rests or even by car. Fascinated about it will only be the one who wants to get better and better on this.

Many of the things that make this mission tense, have to happen in the head of the player.
I know now, that I'm asking for too much, if the player isn't fascinated by the Romero zombies and doesn't have the military background to recognize and use the potential of the OFP squad control.
...and now I'm left with a very small target group.  :-\

That's also a problem for this betatest, as I'm asking you to test something, that isn't directly a "normal" OFP mission, like you all were expecting.
And (no offense!), I believe MachoMan is my first beta tester here, that didn't play the mission with wrong expectations.


Important is, I had to write this statement already at the alpha testing on the BI forum.
It looks like most of the new players have to be introduced to this mission, like it is a small new game. A tutorial about the OFP squad control would also be good. - Damn, maybe even a introduction to the Romero universe.
I think my briefing.html has already reached the limits of OFP and userfriendlyness, so I need something more.

Would you all agree, that the most important thing to do is a detailed documentation, and not chainging this mission to be more mainstream?
I'm thinking about a pdf or html documentation with pictures. What format would be better?

[MIG]

I've played this mission twice and i get it finnished. Here is my fast review.


Overview: Good! Nothing to point here.

Intro: Very good work! The sound was taken from the original "Night of the living dead" movie.

Briefing: A very complete guide to understand and play the mission. Nothing more to say.

Mission: It lags a bit at start but it is related with the spawned zombies and civilians. After a while the lag disapears. It is a hard mission and i was able to save only a few civilians (about 32 i guess). It takes a while and the only boring thing is the time that player wastes inside the hummer without no action (of course it is a realistic Zombie Outbreake Simulation and Hummers don't have radio to listen to some music ) or waiting for an available rescue transportation for civilians. I noticed another small bug but that is related with AI. AI face some problems driving inside the cities and get stucked sometimes. Rescue convoy included. No more to point except say that is hopefully a different type of zombie mission and it is very well done in all aspects.

Outros: didn't find any. I didn't edit the mission file but i think that final cutscene with the credits was inserted in the mission .

Conclusion: Excellent mission! It deserves a sequel  

[Mikero]

This is great!

Finally, some people giving this mission a decent road test with some strong differences about whether they like it or not. This is what you needed Trapper.

You dont need more online documentation. You need to empasise this is an ant colony mission. Some will love it, and do.

Nice work, everyone.

[bardosy]

Trapper!!! You made me mad!  ;D
I try your mission and after the first village I said: wow, a new concept and feeling, great! But after the second village I try to calm down. Damn!!! This f*cking evac humvees... Always stucked. Always!!! I reload many times, but the effect is same.  :'(
I used your tool to watch where stucked this AI vehicles, but they even not START!!!! They stand at the base!
Have you any idea why?

I have some idea to you (from a beginer):
1., Cheat a little bit and setPos the humvees near the evac point, but delayed of course.
2., The player can designate not only one destination pont, but a rout.
3., You define fix rout points and you recognise (with a trigger) witch region is the destination and choose a rout for there.

Hm?

[MachoMan]

Lol, there are multiple convoys! Ever tried pressing next an extra time.

[Trapper]

@MiG
Thanks for stopping by MiG.
The overall initial lag will be reduced in the next version, but I can see no way to get rid of the heavy 1sec freeze. (at least it lasts only a second)
I encourage everyone to listen his favourite apocalypse music while playing this long mission! - I can't expect of anybody to listen for two hours to a background music that I did predetermine. So there is none.
I can't do much for the OFP AI driving. You have to practice on your own which maneuvering is possible for it. It isn't that bad when you got used to it.
The final credit cutrscs actually play in the correct outro segment of the mission.

@Mikero
Yeah, I'm happy now.  ;D
Mikero you always say "ephasise"... give me some examples please, I've run out of ideas for that. Nothing shows effect, only forum discussions with the players.
My final conclusion was that a nice looking documentation in the zip will help everyone new to it, to realize what he is about to play. - But you believe that won't help either.

@bardosy
I already thought my mission scared you to death.
Thank you for testing.
You just stumbled about the same problem like almost everyone here at first: Doing the evacuation tutorial (in the notes) step by step for the first evacuation is essential.
In advance: You didn't do a single map click to finish the evac call, thats all.
I think now you can start the real testing.

1. I don't like to. It would be very unrealistic and I try to avoid that in my ant colony. Also it gives the bored players some driving around HMMWVs to watch.
2. Very complicated to integrate and to play. It would cause more self-induced ai pathfinding "bugs" by the player.
3. This beginer just found out the magic in my mission. - I do it with many gamelogics and evaluating the map click pos, but it's this system.

@MachoMan

Lol, there are multiple convoys! Ever tried pressing next an extra time.

I don't understand your line at all, sorry.
About the "mayhem", there is a bit of it in the north of the island, but for know i kept that simple to keep the cpu load low. - Maybe you have a look at this region.
Graveyards (because of a mortuary) are in the random spawn positions of the first zombies if possible, but there is no real "rising from the graves" in the Romero universe. So I wont use them for constant zombie production.

@Cheetah
Most of your suggestions would turn this ant colony into a more common zombie mission. I can't spawn zombies every now and then, because it would falsify the spread simulation on this island.
The zombies are supposed to be that weak (according to night of the living dead), and a few of them shouldn't be a danger for armed soldiers. Scarry in this universe isn't really one zombie acting like a aggressive retarded, scarry is only the thought of their numbers everywhere.
That you only encountered two zombies at once is caused by not playing the mission to the end. There is a high chance to meet one or two bigger groups when the spread continous.
At least one ammo shortage of one of your fireteams is very likely over the whole mission. (Remeber the soldier you sent back to base for refitting but ignored later thru bugs)

It's really not for the pure action seekers here. It's not Resident Evil like survivial horror. There is a more subtile apocalyptic horror in this ant colony mission:
- Everywhere on earth is happening the same.
- Natural borders keep the zombie situation relatively controlled on an island.
- You don't know, if there will be any HQ left, taking care of you after this mission.
- Try to get a feeling of your character's (commanding officer for the island) responsibility for the evacuation and his platoon.

[Cheetah]

I've tried playing this mission again, because I don't like missions that I can't get to an end . I have to end them, at least that's what I want to accomplish.

This time it played alot better, I think this is how you should play this mission, I found some errors though, but these might have been caused by the AI (will have been caused by the AI probably).

I ordered my other squad towards the town in the east while I went to the closest town and all the way to the west. We secured some towns, although I had some men remaining at two towns to wait before these could be evacuated. Yes, they were waiting while I ended my mission, more about that later on. All went on without any big problems. Only thing I've experienced was that a town in the west (the second furthest) had a black question mark, but there were no civilians there anymore. I killed some zombies around that area (they were probably the civilians there), but shouldn't the marker disappear?

After this I met with my Red squad at an intersection in the center of the island to move to another town. The first time I hadn't done this and suddenly they didn't respond, well my radio messages were like "6 is down", "7 is down" .. etc. (until #10)

I figured out there would be 'some' resistance there. This is why I routed team Red and #2 + me (#2 is my gunner, #3,4,5 were at two remaining towns). We drove to the northwest and I discovered a large zombie 'company' in the distance. Let my two Humvee's stand next to each other and let the driver of the other hummer (and myself) disembark. Ordered the other three soldiers to get out so that we had all the firepower we could get. The zombies were slaughtered, but I can think of what happened before the retry . I think about twenty zombies had been killed by us, maybe even more than twenty. Well, just want to say that from this point I begin to like the mission, yes really. I love having those masses of zombies marching towards me and 'executing' them.

After this I moved into the village where the zombies came from, I noticed that there were no civilians there although there was a black question mark. I would prefer it if you'd remove the question mark if there's no civilians there (zombie != civilian).
A few minutes after this I quit the mission, why? A convoy got stuck in a town (X West, don't know what the name X was, only know it had West in the name).

They were inside the town from what I could see (I have a screenshot, but I don't think that you really need to see it, if you'd like to see it, just tell me).
It's just that they wouldn't move anymore, well I can always retry, but that is 30 minutes again. I'll do it sometime again probably, maybe this week I don't know yet.

I have two more pictures of me VS the massive zombie army (well, not all are on the picture, they were too spread out), it's a memory for me that I had a chance to fight against this kind of an army .
Anyways this mission gets more interesting in the later part for me, this is when it becomes a bit harder for the player. He has to be faster because the zombies are spreading out a bit more. The only real problem is that you've got to wait before a convoy is ready to move out again. The other 'less real' problem is that the convoys tend to get stuck, it's just that you can't really do much about it.

[MachoMan]

@MachoMan I don't understand your line at all, sorry.

I was refering to bardosy's post. There are two humvee convoys, right?

[Trapper]

@Cheetah
You're finaly getting the hang of it.

The marker system is described in the evac tutorial:

?
Situation unknown. -
No direct contact with possible survivors, either they are still alive or zombies.

X (green)
Contact with survivors. -
Someone of your squad is closer than 50m to a living civil leader.
The position of the marker always shows the civil leader position in realtime.
If the distance becomes more than 50m, X turns into the question mark again. It marks the last known position and won't move anymore.

A civil group marker is only deleted when they are (99%) save in the evac trucks and on their way to the rescue center.
So in the end, the last unsolved question marks can help to determine the zombie spread movement.
I can't change anything on the markers if there are no civilians anymore, as it would be a big spoiler about the zombie movements. - There's no realistic reason how the player could know about what happenend without seeing it for himself. - His eyes and ears are the 1st squad only and he is his own "PapaBear".
Don't worry, if you scout the area around a question mark and see no survivors, then you can't find this group anywhere else (only as zombies).

What I do to remind myself of cities that I've declared as abandoned, is creating my own map marker in game:
Just double click on the map. Use up and down to select it's type.


The convoy getting stuck is the biggest bug of this mission. Beside improving it whereever I can, the only way to help the player, is doing autosaves everytime he calls convoy DeltaGreen. So he won't have to redo the whole mission later.
If I would autosave more often, the chance is too high to save an already stuck convoy, which would make the savegame useless. (I think Mikero already discovered this problem by using the savegame cheat )


As the start of the spread is always random, your next game will be different. Have fun!


@MachoMan
Yes you're right. - But without clicking on the map for the first convoy, he can't call the second.

[Trapper]

This could help, it's from the alpha tests in the BIs forum:

Choose open areas, like the ones marked in this image for best evac results...
P I C T U R E
(The evaczone selected on the screenshot always worked fine for me at San Alto)
I hope this image will help everybody with ai evacs that get stuck.
The evac script is very detailed, and I'm 99% sure the ai is able to handle evacs in areas like this. Optimal is to have enough space for two HMMWVs turning around when returning to base. Even space for 1 1/2 should be ok. (The second is scripted to hold until the first found its way back)
Also make sure you won't block the evaczone with your men or cars.

[bardosy]

In advance: You didn't do a single map click to finish the evac call, thats all.

I don't undestand. The first evac was working fine. They come, they evac and they return to the base (I recived a radio message "we are here and we are ready for the next evac")

In the next (north from the base) I call the evac for a very clear zone. I run back to the main road for no problems. And I use the action menu "Evac" and click to the main road (not in the village) The survivors run there (to the main road) and we defend them from the zombies. And waiting...

When I use your tool, I saw the evac Humvees in the base and the driver standing up in the seet. Not siting, just stand and their heads is outsite from the car. I saw this only in Hidden and Dangerous game (I think this is a very tipical checz bug).

I read the manual for evacing, but I try it again...