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Author Topic: (Review Completed) [SP] The Uprising v2.0  (Read 19703 times)

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Offline markb50k

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(Review Completed) [SP] The Uprising v2.0
« on: 16 Nov 2005, 08:50:43 »


The Uprising
-----------------------------
Single Player
Veteran Mode
Everon
OFP 1.96
No addons
Size:  ~1.6MB

Rumors of an uprising on Everon have a history as old as the American occupation there.  But this time there may be something to it.  TAKE COMMAND of a Heavy/Light mixed Battalion and investigate the rumor, and if necessary put down any resistance.

You play the role of a Battalion Commander in charge of the U.S. forces occupying Everon.  

The mission is BIG and LONG.  It covers the entire scope of the island and really has two main phases.

Pre Uprising:  talk to the civilian populace to discover weapons caches and resistance leaders.  By doing enough of this you can actually prevent the uprising.

Uprising:  The civilian populace, largely dependant on how well you do in the Pre Uprising phase, will revolt and you will spend the rest of the mission fighting an island wide uprising using the assets at your disposal.

I have created a very simplified command engine that will allow you to move all of your forces around the island (move, embark, disembark, give status, and support functions, with markers for each unit updated realtime to show their locations)

Your battalion consists of a HQ Company (yourself, scouts, medics, repair, ammo, etc) plus a Mech Infantry Co, Armor Co, 2 x Light Infantry Co, and a helicopter Co.  Units are broken down to the squad/section level.

The AI will set objectives to take the entire island.

Again, this mission is pretty big and will take time to play, and IMO pretty hard, but if you are looking for a more grand scale type mission than this is just for you.

Intro/Outros included

Thanks again to whoever might try this one out.

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

EDIT:  
Version 2.0
- Not sure what additional changes I made before the crash, but they are in here.  The mission was finished and up for review but it was lost.  Here is the v2.0.
- Small cutscene when the uprising begins.

Version 1.8
- FIXED BUG that had too many resistance recruits being created
- Adjusted info sharing script for AI to be more effective
- Added five new recordings for some of the major mission plot points
- Updated text on one mission objective to make it more clear
- Added brief mission description on overview.html
- Reorganized briefing information on briefing.html to ease navigation

Version 1.7
- NO BUG FIXES so if you are already playing 1.6 keep going, unless you would like to use these new features (all command engine related) in 1.7...
- if multiple unit markers are bunched close together on map, you can keep clicking to select the next unit in the 'stack' (boardgame term).
- you can now set the Behaviour of your units between SAFE, AWARE, and COMBAT
- you can now have your units FACE a specific direction by ALT-Clicking on a location on the map with the unit selected.  Similar to ordering them to MOVE (SHIFT-Click), they will face the location instead of moving to it.
- for HELICOPTERS, you can now order them to LAND (land and engine off), HOVER TO PICK UP, or HOVER TO DROP OFF.  These work perfectly for both AI groups and the player's group.
- CONTACT REPORTS:  Trigger logic had these reports getting fired for each bad guy detected at a town location.  This has been fixed so that only a single Contact Report will be broadcast for all the trigger hits for that town over a given time (basically gets rid off alot of repetitive radio chatter but still provides you with the knowledge that your troops are in combat).
- FRIENDLY LOSS REPORTS:  Old event handler logic would give you a separate radio message for each friendly lost.  Now these reports will be combined together over a given time period (20 sec.) and broadcast as 1 message saying "We lost X soldiers", etc.
- FRIENDLY VEHICLE LOSS REPORTS (NEW):  If you lose an actual vehicle you will be told of this (this is in addition to the personnel loss reports).  
- ENEMY KILLS REPORTS (NEW):  Similar to friendly loss reports, your units will now report enemy kills, combined over a time period (20 sec.) ("We just took out X enemy!!"), etc.

Version 1.6
- player now can choose the starting U.S. approval rating on Everon.  Recommend 60% if you want to easily prevent the uprising, or if you are a masochist, go ahead and start off at 10%!!
(I don't foresee me tweaking the mission anymore unless its a really good idea or a bug.  Now I am going to try beating it on Max Difficulty :)  )

Version 1.5
- on load of a resave, stationary civilians kept moving around a bit for a minute or so.  I didn't like that, so I fixed it.
- overhauled the command engine using CoC as inspiration.  After playing the war part a few times, I realized how hard it was to give units orders, so its now more streamlined including
- - now you can click on the unit markers to select it
- - after selecting a unit, just SHIFT-CLICK the map to get them to move
- - removed the "Get Status" option, now whenever you click a unit a status window shows the unit's strength down to fuel and damage levels (an improvement)
- - with this streamlined system, I have taken away the ability of giving commands to multiple groups at the same time.  Maybe I will add it in later, but the improvements in the command engine more than make up for it.

Version 1.4
- added more autosave points
- fixed bonehead bug that has user locked up at mission briefing

Version 1.3
- added opening cutscene to mission
- overhauled civilian processing.  now most civilians are stationary in realistic locations (standing in doorways, grouped at street corners, manning fuel stations, etc), and moving civilians stay in town in there movements.  
- added parked vehicles in realistic locations for atmosphere
- added random vehicular traffic.  You will encounter plenty of civilians driving around.
- if you capture a leader you will get an additional bit of info
- when a cache is revealed, if you move within 100m of it, it will appear.  So all you should have to do is look at the map once for its location then you can go to that vicinity and it should appear.
- fixed some bugs

Version 1.2
- reworked overview.html and briefing.html
- added fadeout in intro and changed standard "Get Ready"
- adjust skill level in player group and rearranged them to prevent game engine issue
- added a bit of gear choice
- added starting position marker
- added civilian surrender animation
- question/arrest actions always present (reduce drag on engine).  actions will always work on nearest civilian within 15m.  will give alert if no civilians in range.
- cleaned up processing at start of uprising (including removing SKIP TO UPRISING radio option at war start)
- caches now will be in sensible locations
- ammo box will appear when a cache is found (unusable)
- adjustment to one civilian feedback to ensure player knows the map has been marked
- shortened tag names on unit markers to make less busy.  adjusted starting locations of friendly forces.
- adjusted movement cycles of civilian units to make them stationary more often and to keep them close to their home towns.

Version 1.1
- beefed up the briefing with more detailed instructions on how to proceed with mission
- cleaned up markers showing too early

« Last Edit: 09 May 2009, 01:57:20 by Walter_E_Kurtz »

Offline markb50k

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Re:The Uprising v1.0
« Reply #1 on: 17 Nov 2005, 16:47:16 »
Forgive me, this is my first submission for beta testing, so I am not too sure what to expect in terms of feedback turnaround time.  

Has anyone tried it?  I know it could be a long mission, so I am just assuming people haven't finished it yet.  

Thanks.
« Last Edit: 17 Nov 2005, 16:48:05 by markb50k »

Conors

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Re:The Uprising v1.0
« Reply #2 on: 17 Nov 2005, 18:54:38 »
on to it now, have patience my child.

Offline Cheetah

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Re:The Uprising v1.0
« Reply #3 on: 17 Nov 2005, 20:57:50 »
I've tried you mission to check if it was something for me to play and I must say that it looks really promising. I didn't have much time, so I could only try it once, needless to say I failed very hard. The problem was that I didn't really knew how the command engine worked when I needed to know it, but I'll explain this later on. I'll start with with the beginning, comments about the briefing will follow and the overview etc. will be skipped, because I didn't take a real good look at those things.

Mission:
The first problem was where to f*ck I should start in this huge mission. Well, take the humvee and get to Levie, might find something there. I had a problem in the beginning, I didn't really know what to do. The mission is so huge, that you should guide the player a bit more in the briefing. You briefing should give a lot more detail, where could the player look first etc. In Abandoned Armies you start off small, here you start with all your forces, the whole island.

Therefore I'd like to ask you a big favour, please help / guide the player in the beginning. You could let him go to Levie, because the population there seems agressive or something. Right now, it's IMO a bit too open. A section in the briefing wouldn't hurt either, to tell the player where the major enemy positions could be or something like this. Also, make clear to the player that the question marks on the map are the points of interest for the player, or did I get this wrong? The question marks were there before the radio message came that the enemy positions were marked on the map (didn't see any new markers so I guess the question marks are the ones I need to look at).

Uhm where was I, oh after driving to Levie I saw some civilians and remembered I could ask several questions. The first wasn't really helpfull to me, the second one had to be arrested. He didn't really like the soldiers, immediately he dissappeared, pretty strange, can't you find a way to do this better? It would sure be better for the atmosphere / eyecandy to see a bit different approach on this.

After questioning about five civilians two were arrested and the hell broke loose, quite fast in my opinion. Especially if you haven't got really used to the mission and didn't take a look at the command engine. It seemed like the enemy forces attacked us. Towns fall very rapidly, I think that I lost 3/4 of the island (it looked like that on the radio) in two minutes, maybe in even less time. I tried commanding my troops to the positions I had to defend, but it didn't work, squads were lost and I decided that I would never be able to do a thing about it. There were maybe ten minutes passed in the mission before I quit the mission.

What I learned? That I needed to get a bit into the command interface before the war starts, what happened to me now was quite stupid.
I tried commanding a platoon to some position, but didn't notice that I had to do a few more things. Thought I could control entire platoons, oops, I had to do a bit more work than that.
What I prefer? A dialog in which I can do all things, so the whole command engine can be overseen in one dialog. Don't really know if you get me on this.

Not really much more to add, I know that my feedback is a bit negative. Don't think that your mission is worthless, it is very good, but if you've got these kind of ideas for your mission you must be prepared to spend a good deal of time in it. And in a huge mission, there's plenty of things to fix.
Good luck with it, I'll try the mission again sometime.
Like missions? Help with Beta Testing! or take a look at the OFPEC Missions Depot for reviewed missions!

Offline markb50k

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Re:The Uprising v1.0
« Reply #4 on: 17 Nov 2005, 23:16:20 »
Thanks for the feedback!

- Question Mark markers.  Yes, I should have them hidden until the initial message.  Will do.

- Give more info early on to give the player the lay of the land.  I was unsure what would be the proper amount of intel to give, but now I know to increase it up a good bit.  I just didn't want it "gamed" so to speak, and more of an open mission, but I will try to achieve a happy medium.  

- Arrests.  I was trying to do an animatic but couldn't find the right one for a Civilian to do.  Tried "FXStandSurUniv" and it wouldn't work.  I guess at the minimum I can hint that the guy has been taken into custody.  It's a bit abstract, I know, but didn't know what else to do there.

- Command Interface.  Would love to do a dialog but have never created one so I will look it up and see what I can do.

- Back to Arresting.  FYI you don't really need to arrest even if the guy is belligerent.  Sure, that loon will most likely join the resistance when it happens but by arresting him you bring the overall civilian morale down a tick, which IMO is a worse option.  I will try to explain a little more of this in the briefing, how the civilian morale is affected.

-Uprising happened quick.  Usually the uprising won't happen real early in the mission unless you kill civilians, so perhaps you hit the "SKIP TO UPRISING" entry on the radio.  And given that the uprising happened so early, it was most likely because the civilian morale got so low that they immediately rebelled (see the Arrest comment up top).

Thanks again for the feedback, I'll try to get in some improvements ASAP.


Offline Mikero

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #5 on: 18 Nov 2005, 08:26:26 »
Hi MarkB :wave:

you're understandably impatient to get some feedback from us here, but also understand we have some whoppers in for beta testing, some of them campaigns, and they take a LOT of time.

I've quickly grabbed your animal to give you a quick response that we are on to it, but this little beast aint so little! Expect a delay, this thing's HUGE!!

Here's so far....
OFP 1.96 vetmode no superai, 5685

Package:

we need readmes. And, you need readme's. Some of the info on the overview, and some of the info provided on the forum first topic, should be in there. A little less detail should be provided in back pages of the mission briefing, imho. But, a readme, you need.

You need jpgs. To advertise this mission we need things we can throw up as eye candy. Start now, by editing your 1st topic and plunk a sexy picture in there. Small thing, big dividends.
--
Scanned your mission pbo and came up with an interesting result. It's missing bas opfor. You might want to remove it! In fact, it's not used at all, and the mission doesn't scream,  but, your mission thinks it's needed (addons[]=)
----

Overview:

Interesting Overview, a little bit jaggedy for me in the readability. Good to see author advertising, a revision number is always useful.

The picture unfortunately doesn't do it. For starters it's been skewed. That could be fixed by simply putting a border around it, picture postcard style. But I think really, that picture could be the dramatic frontpiece by killing all the blurb and just making it longer and larger. Have a look at pmc fury overview for an idea of what i mean, you're using non-standard vertical, and not taking advantage of vertical space. Think you can do better. Appeal, is everything (unfortunately)

Intro:

Damn excellent. Original, good camera work. It did the single most important thing. It told a story. And, it left many questions unanswered. Good one. Makes you want to play this doesn't it.

An unpleasant abrubt 'get ready'. Firstly, do a fade out, second, change get ready to something a tad more interesting. (please)

Forest was a teeny little too dark, and ending scene was a little too faded, washed out.

All niggles. The intro is a good one, no real need to touch it if you dont' want to (except that fade out)

Briefing:

Almost perfect in presentation / readability. Again, a little jarring to just have 3 links. Put a small sentence above them, just for effect.

Notes:

Excellent. Among the best I've read because they tell me, in a storyline way, what to expect. Don't like your signature at end, remember, ofp is about getting immersed. You pulled me back to nOv 2005 by placing your sig. Not a clever idea.

Gear selection none: A pity. You _could_ afford a bit of personal choice here even though i know I aint going to be a grunt, we like a bit of spice and flavor. Don't put the kitchen sink, but let me choose and swap a little.

Group:

Unhappy to see everyone is expert. I'm aware of ai issues but surely only tank commanders are experts.

General links

all well written and highly readable. No typos discoverd. The deeper I went, the more I realised this is a coc-style mission. I don't play them too well, so I skipped the important how-to instructions because this mission style tends to frustrate me. I lose patience, We shall see.

One glaring error.
You don't provide a 'start here' link. Could not care less what you call, care even less how you present it, but, have it, we must have. One slip of the mouse and it's all over, thank you for playing.

Mission:

good grief, checked the map and all those ? wow! I dont' even know if you can, but, if you can start us off in the breifing with compressed, not expanded, map, it's better. EG the impact you need to get over to player is this IS island wide, huge, detailed, enormous. No quick slugfest in and around hq.

Horrible: as soon as plan updated. the map became a mess.
1) use a smaller font
2) move the 'team' so that they aren't jumbled all over each other. Ok, so it wont last long if we move about individually, but, first impressions are everything, aren't they. Use shorter names if you have to.

I know what it is, I know the tagtexts are important, essential in fact, but you need to shrink 'em. It's noisy and bewildering around hq. If I, a player, make it bewildering by moving things around, that's my fault, but you aren't allowed to 8)
---
Once I got myself organised we get the typical engine "where are you's" Vehicles marked away when they're right next to me. The answer to that is to linearly progress the soldiers. Eg, my driver is #7, he needs to be #2 and so on, thru the various vehicles. It's a classic engine 'error'.
---

Phew! Marvellous. Brilliant to my mind.

This is going to take ages (good). As a player, i have my own severe learning curve to endure, B/1/2 and what it really means. It's all good stuff, but wow!

Just to hunt a town is long, to hunt all towns ??? Gee. Love it.

And all of that before I even start a fight.

Loved the hidden objective(s). Loved the progression.

Nasty stuff with delays to 'question civilian' I know the engine's working overtime here, please try and get it running faster snappier. I'm waiting on action delays, and then worse, I'm waiting on the delay to dissapear before I can move to next guy and so on. Again, unpleasant delay between action and text. Please try and quicken it's pace.

Made mistake of arresting anyone who didn't like me 8)

Eventually got an ammo crate info, and a leader thingo. Got confused with "ill show you' i followed the guy and shot whoever he 'showed me" didn't realise he was marking map, and, confusingly, you correctly state it for ammo stuff. Please sort that one out.

Eventually for a quick check, I used the option to start war. I had bags of time and learning curve needed to understand all the radio commands for moving tropps around. You did well here, and I will just have to knuckle under and get it all worked out by studying and experimenting. I think the keyword is experiment, because no-way, do you just hit the start button and expect mission complete sometime later.

More annoyances with delays due to engine workings, One notable one was 10 or so seconds between starting war and something actually happeing. Ie the engine was in a setup phase. Although not applicable to this sequence, you should consider using cutscenes to mask delays. Ie the engine will hapilly process some scripts while player is watching movies.

Nice one. but don't expect more, 'real soon now' because there are (my estimation) several days of learning involved in how to master this mission, let alone play it.

Edit:
although unlikely to be in final release, hide the option to start a war once it's triggered. I hit it several times ;)

« Last Edit: 18 Nov 2005, 08:34:42 by Mikero »
Just say no to bugz

Offline markb50k

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #6 on: 18 Nov 2005, 17:13:22 »
@Mikero

thanks for all that feedback.  Its gonna take some time for me to digest all your input (which is good).

Re:  Waiting for actions to go away.  Actually you don't really need to wait for the actions to go away.  If you select Question Civilian it will ask whoever happens to be closest to you at that time, within a certain distance.  Perhaps what I should do for that is just leave the actions there all the time, perhaps change the action to "Question Nearest Civilian" something like that, and let you select it whenever you want.  If there is a civilian close by it will activate them, otherwise hint you feedback that "You shout but no one is close enough to hear you!", hehe.

As for the rest of the stuff, I'll get working on that ASAP.

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #7 on: 18 Nov 2005, 19:47:55 »
One of the problems i found was that the civs walk away from the towns and from you, can you make them stay still its like they have ADHD also one thing (i'm not sure if this is possible) is the caches, is it possible to make them visable and in senseible locations, it said i had found one in the middle of the road, if you can have a look at that i would be grateful.

Offline markb50k

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #8 on: 18 Nov 2005, 22:15:09 »
@Conors

For the walking around civs, what I could do is have them stay within a certain distance from the unseen "town center".  I kind of love pure randomness where perhaps you would see some civs walking through the woods, etc.  but I understand for gameplay it could be pretty hard finding civs especially after a while in the game.  In addition I could have civs stay put between movements longer so they will be stationary most of the time.

As for caches, it would make the game too easy if they were visible, so I definitely want to keep them abstractly invisible and only signified by a location on the map.  But, I could see about, for each town, having a certain number of possible locations (like 10 or so) where the cache could be.  That would keep randomness with realism.  And I could make the cache become visible after you find it, simulating that you have moved away some shrubbery or camouflage.

EDIT:
@Mikero
Been going through this unit marker stuff and can't seem to find a way of getting the text on the markers to shrink.  The symbol can shrink but the text stays the same size.  If I can't get it to shrink, I'm thinking of just showing the labels units you have selected, basically some way of limiting which labels are showing up at a time.  I'll see if i can cut out the slashes (FYI:  B/1/2 means Bravo Company, 1st Platoon, 2nd Squad).  That will help a small bit

Thanks for the feedback


« Last Edit: 18 Nov 2005, 22:56:44 by markb50k »

Offline Mikero

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #9 on: 19 Nov 2005, 02:27:10 »
>Fonts

xenofane


apologies to GBarron i can't find his tute on same subject
Just say no to bugz

Conors

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #10 on: 19 Nov 2005, 10:59:17 »
You could always make the civ surrender when you arrest them with a script or something.

Offline penguinman

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #11 on: 19 Nov 2005, 19:41:23 »
Ok i tried this one

on the campaign book, I selected the uprising and all it did was give me a "no entry" error involving the description. ext
and when I try to press start it goes back to main screen. theres not much more to it, everything else was fine

I hope you get it working

Offline Mikero

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #12 on: 20 Nov 2005, 05:36:28 »
 8) 8) 8)It isn't a campaign 8) 8) 8)
Just say no to bugz

Offline penguinman

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Re:The Uprising v1.1
« Reply #13 on: 20 Nov 2005, 05:48:22 »
oh god, im dumb, :-[

I cant even beta test sombodys mission

sorry for the trouble,

il have it properly tested and reported on tomorow.

Offline markb50k

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Re:The Uprising v1.2
« Reply #14 on: 20 Nov 2005, 07:47:02 »
new version and new link on 1st post.  lots of little adjustments.

EDIT:

Oh and if a moderator could somehow removed the little attached file thingy from the first post.  It says the attached file doesn't exist even when I try to remove the attachment.  Its a little confusing for the reader.
« Last Edit: 21 Nov 2005, 02:35:58 by markb50k »