Quarantine - 12 player Zombie RPG (review please)

[D.murphy man]

Hm thats strange, i cant think what could be causing that error inless your not running the latest version of Arma? (where addPublicVariableEventHandler was implemented) other wise im clueless, as it seems to work just fine for me. Also i have no idea what the hell dodge_logic is in less they where running an edited version of the mission using new addons or something.

But ill try my best to see (and fix) whats causing your problems. Are you by any chance running any mods whiles playing that could cause conflicts with scripts or addons?

[Shrubberyjsc]

Hmm, well I'm running 1.08.5163 because that's what my friends are using. If I get the latest version, will it be backwards compatible? Could I still play with  people who have 1.08?

I don't have any mods or addons apart from what you require to play your mission.

(To tell you the truth, it's the only reason I went from OFP to ArmA.   ^.^   )

[Spooner]

Specifically, you need 1.09 beta or higher (1.14 is the current, stable release) to use the mission because that is when some new commands came in that made MP games easier to script. If you upgrade, then there is no way you'd be able to play with 1.08 players. However, there is no reason for anyone to stay with 1.08, since 1.14 is a stable release and has very significant improvements over 1.08 (1.09, 1.11 & 1.12 were all beta releases and I can understand why people would avoid them).

To make it clearer for players though, you should put in the line:

Code: (top of init.sqf) [Select]

requiredVersion = "1.09"
Since then if people try to play the mission without the required version they will get a clear error message.

[Shrubberyjsc]

Thanks very much.

It's working, and I'm loving it. 

Hmm, could you make it so that the zombies are in greater numbers during night?

 


_____________

Edit:

So I just grabbed a .pbo unpacker and tried to look at the insides of Quarantine, but it doesn't work...

Did you not want people to be able to unpack it/did you put some sort of protection on it?

[D.murphy man]

 Sorry but im not sure weather thats possible to spawn more zombies during the night, plus all the numbers of spawned zombies i have tried to carefully balance to compensate lag and 114 group limit.

And no i have no put any sort of protection on it! not sure why it would be unpacking, might be because i quickly pbo'd it using cpbo rather then saving to mp missions in Arma. I am always happy for people to edit my missions (as long as they give credit) as thats pretty much how i learned to script in OFP/Arma by tearing apart peoples missions and experimenting, so i wouldn't want to deny any one else the opportunity to learn them selves and hopefully make more zombie missions :p .

[Shrubberyjsc]

Hmm, I thought that it was possible to get past the group limit.

Wasn't there a thread called breaking the 144 group limit? I think it dealt with the same issue with the yomies.

I still don't know what's wrong with the .pbo

I've tried 2 pbo unpackers now, including the one you used to pack.

And I have successfully unpacked a pbo before, but whenever I try to unpack yours, it quits without producing the files.

 



__________

Edit:

Oops, you're the one who made that thread.   

 

I guess if anybody knows what's possible it's you, but I'm just curious because it doesn't seem like there's 500 zombies (yomies), running around.

Heck, I don't even ever see as many as are in the screenshots that are packed with the yomies sample mission.

It must be primarily lag that's the limiting factor, but would it be possible to put in a admin script to ramp it up if everyone is doing too well for themselves? Currently it's not quite as difficult as it could be imo.

All in all it's fabulous, a few more yomies wouldn't hurt, is all I'm saying.

 

Oooh, also, you wanted suggestions:

It'd be really cool to have 'protect' type missions with great dialogue about the current situation from the person you're protecting. Awesome voice acting really sets the mood if you can get it.

 


Also, also:

I was saddened that I can't see the fuel gauge on most, if not all vehicles. I noticed that the civilians that you rescue can indicate when the fuel is low over their radio, but I'd love a GUI to indicate fuel level, if that's not too much to ask.

Also, I had a thought about rescuing the civilians:

 When I'm just starting out, I like to scavenge the houses near the border, and look for survivors close to the safe zone, because taking them quickly across to safe territory is easy money. Maybe too easy money. What if the civilians or the government or whoever's paying you, would pay you proportional to the distance that the civilian was transported?

I also noticed that you can't sell back the magazines of ammo, but that's a detail, and maybe that's good, I guess it might be possible to sell back 1 bullet.   

I had just one more last thought: What if you could hire a few mercenaries to do your bidding? You'd need to pay them per day, and they wouldn't be cheap, but they could watch your back. I've noticed everything becomes easier when the civilians in my group start calling out the positions of yomies that are quietly flanking me.

 

______________

Just played again and noticed a few things:

The air raid siren is looping for several minutes sometimes. It's enough to make me want to kill the M2.  DX

The radiation is a very interesting system, but it and the medkits need some help.

*The action "use medkit" prefers to use anti-rads. If you have any anti-rads, they get used instead of medkits.

*The anti-rads are not balanced for what they do. Yes, they should be expensive, but they should clear at least 25-50% of exposure imo, because at 10%, it's not feasible to carry the amount needed to venture into the radiation zone. Which leads me to:

*The radiation zone seems very confined. Not that there isn't enough area covered by fallout, but that the transition from 'clear' to 'high' seems to be as little as 50 meters.

*It'd be nice to have a high-end vehicle that has NBC protection in real life, have protection from radiation in the fallout zones.

*Medkits can be used even when you are perfectly healthy. And since "Use medkit" is right next to all those other actions I use, it has a high chance of being accidentally used when not necessary.

*Mounted machine guns on cars do not credit you with the money for killing yomies, I can understand that running them over doesn't, but this would be nice.

*Consider moving the jeep with M2. It's fairly close to the spawn, easy to find, and can be purchased at the car dealer for $25K. Maybe it should be covered by radiation somewhere?

*Can there be a way to sell vehicles? It'd be nice to find a sports car and try not to damage it when bringing it back. Maybe they're more common in radioactive areas?

**Somewhat Important!** Yomies are capable of literally spawning right next to you. Is there any way to stop this?

Thanks very much for creating such a good mission. I'd be very interested in playtesting the ideas you had earlier, mainly that more or all of the island is over-run and you can set up outposts.

Is it possible to spawn walls?

[D.murphy man]

I think you've misunderstood whats going on with 144 group limit, indeed there isn't 500 yomies running around every time you enter a spawn zone (which are usually in cities), because the way yomies spawn is 1 yomie per group due to problems with FSM that controls yomies movement and attacking being over ridden when the yomies are all in one group together by orders from the group leader, so only a maximum of 144 yomies currently. Each spawn zone usually spawns around 20 - 50 yomies, this is because its a MP mission for up to 12 players, if thous 12 players are in different locations across the island they are all setting of spawn zones that subtract from the 144 limit. So one players in a spawn zone that spawns 20 yomies, another in a city some where else spawning 50 yomies thats 144 - 70 = 74 yomies left to spawn. Then 2 or 3 more players connect, and start wandering around setting off spawns that are also subtracting from the spawn limit, eventually a situation will arise (if theres enough players wandering around by them selves into different spawns all acorss the island) where a player will enter an area and no yomies will spawn due to the the max limit of 144 being reach with yomies being spawned else where.

Hence why i am not spawning 100 odd yomies in one location when a player enters, and only keeping it to 20 - 50 max in each spawn zone. However i have set all the spawns to INFINITE, meaning as soon as you kill a yomie, another will spawn, creating the illusion of there being a lot more zombies about then there actually is.

As for your suggestions:

1. I am planning on expanding on the story line and such in the future with things like being able to find old news paper front pages in the quarantine and such, and maybe dialogs with NPC's (not any time soon though)

2.Ill look into adding fuel guages to vehicles some how, but its pretty low on my list of priorities.

3.I think that be a pretty over complicated solution to the problem, i might just remove civilians from the border town altogether.

4. That is indeed why you cant sell magazines back to the shops, because its impossible to count number of bullets in a magazine, and thus you could sell a magazine with 1 bullet in for full resale price.

5.hiring of mercs is already planned.

About the bugs and such you found:

1.Yea air raid siren cant get pretty anoying, i will look into trying to make it not sound off so much (currently sounds every time the m2 fires.)

2.Noted and fixed, seems it would check to see if you had any medkits (flare red) but take off a anti rad when you used it (flare white)

3.I agree and will up the anti-rads to 25% i think.

4.Indeed the area from low to medium to high is usually only about 100 - 200 meters, ill certainly up this since when in vehicles you can travel from low to a high zone very fast with out knowing.

5.NBC capable vehicles would indeed be a good idea, i might add that in.

6.Currently i do not know how to credit money for players mounted on vehicles but i will look into it.

7.That jeep with m2 has a 50/50 chance of spawning, but i will consider deleting it as it is indeed pretty close to spawn.

8.I think it might be possible to sell vehicles by driving them into some sort of trigger zone, forcing the player to exit, checking the type and dammage of the vehicles and rewarding the player accordingly. Ill certainly look into the possibility.

9.Indeed they are capable of spawning next to you, with the original yomie scripts they wouldn't but they would spawn about a 4 mile away from you when view distance was about a meter in front of your face, hence why i edited it out since i didn't want it to be foggy 24/7 in the mission.

And it would be possible to spawn walls, i can guess what your getting at and i can telll you i have already tried experimenting withe the possibility of setting up barricades. Its still in experimental stages at the moment, currently i cant get the yomies to attack static objects, let alone be able to destroy them.

Thanks for your interest and suggestions in the mission! its greatly appreciated!

[Spooner]

The main reason I didn't implement vehicle selling was because it would be difficult to work out the price based on the ammo in each weapon (if appropriate) and the overall damage on the vehicle. Again, it is a "I might get around to it" sort of thing and if Murphy wants in sooner rather than later, his idea might be best. Same goes with buying new vehicle ammo (not coming any time soon from my end, but possible).

As Muphy says, with magazines for soldiers, you just don't have a clue how much ammo there is left. Can't see an option there except offering you literally buttons for them (i.e. stanag 30round resale = full price / 30 (Assume one bullet left) and then you'd take off the value for it being second hand as well). Thus, I just disabled the option entirely so people wouldn't complain about the poor price given.

[D.murphy man]

V.2.5 (see first page for download from rapidshare or attachment to the first post)
FIXED:Players not being rewarded when completeing a mission if there inside a vehicle
FIXED:Radiation LOW zones now much larger, giving you a chance to take action before entering medium/high zones.
FIXED:Geiger counter sounds, again.
FIXED:Players not being rewarded for zombie kills if shooting them with vehicle mounted weapons.
FIXED:Survivours randomly being deleted from your group
FIXED:Eliminate # of infected mission not counting reliably zombies being killed in area
FIXED:Using Medkits would take away antirads
FIXED:No longer go into a 'heal' animation when using medkits or antirads if you do not have any left.
FIXED:Soldiers not remanning M2's when convoy was deliverd to mil.base.
FIXED:random ammo crates that you find in buildings not being stocked with a weapon and ammo and other weird stuff.
ADDED:Radiation now a server option.
ADDED:Land mines around military base that can be restocked via convoy.
ADDED:New "High" geiger sound - Thanks Ravenholm.
ADDED:New (Optional) ambient music - requires Quarantine_Ambient_Music.pbo addon to be installed.
ADDED:Border is now much more built up with sceneary and AI soldiers patrolling/relaxing. Now feels much more alive and immersive.
ADDED:Players can now 'Talk' to most AI soldiers in the military base and border.
ADDED:Players who kill fellow players within the border zone will be sentanced to death by firing squad.
ADDED:A small prison, players that end up here can talk to the AI convicts to pass the time.
ADDED:Players who kill friendly AI soldiers within the border zone will be sent to prison for 5 minutes.
ADDED:Players can now 'Call out' to survivours in the area. Players are then notified if they hear any survivours in the distance,close, or very close. Survivours that are very close will try to make there way to the player.
ADDED:You can now purchase Mercenaires, your group limit is 5 max.
ADDED:Zombies now have a random chance of hitting you to the ground.
ADDED:You can now sell unwanted vehicles for a marked down price, or sell salvaged vehicles from the quarantine zone.
ADDED:A repair kit, so you can now repair your damaged vehicles.
UPDATED:Survivours now spawn INSIDE buildings, rather then in the streets.
UPDATED: Antirads now take off 20% exposure.
UPDATED:Players map markers now become less accurate and delayed longer the further the player is away from the border.
UPDATED:Zombie unit cap has been increase to around 500, (from previous 144) so i have now increase the amount of zombies that spawn in each spawn zone.

Quarantine ambient music addon (optional) - 42.8 MB

[Trapper]

V2.5 with ambient music on a non-dedicated server.
101st Airborne replacement mod, HiFi Sound mod.

The 2,8Ghz QuadCore server with 2GB RAM and a 16Mbit/1Mbit ADSL connection was laggy if players tried to JIP, but was playable when locked.

Asked about the most annoying bugs, the owner told me that v2.5 has become more alive but also more buggy.
- often the crate spawn is so close to a player that they are blocking
- player weapons sometimes disappear when searching zombie gear (I'm unsure if he was really talking about zombies or dead survivers)
- player weapons sometimes disappear without doing anything
- zombies are able to kill players in armored vehicles

I liked the ambient music but only the tracks I didn't recognize from their original sources. Probably a common problem without your own orchestra. Nettrucker and Balshoiw were creating their own music, weren't they? Maybe they're willing to create some new tracks for you.

The mine markers around the base seemed to be named by cardinal points but not correctly.

A survivor left my group on the ride back to the refugee camp. The first time I've noticed it was after disembarking at a medic tent at the entrance to heal and trying to make him disembark, too. He could've left my group minutes before, I don't know. The bug didn't repeat.

I don't know what happens when the military base had heavy loses and a supply convoy arrives. Will the soldiers be reinforced? Reinforcements could be added to the back of the supply truck in the case of a guard's death.

Getting civilians alive out of the cascaded buildings of eg Ortego is a pain in the ass. They definitely shouldn't spawn there.


It's nice to see you've found a way to create a multiplayer counterpart of ZOS. The only thing I'm missing is the real evolution of an outbreak instead of spawning, but that would be hard to achieve for multiplayer and limit the game time. Oh, and female models.

[D.murphy man]

Thanks for the feedback trapper! much appreciated as always!

- often the crate spawn is so close to a player that they are blocking

I am not sure what you mean by this? blocking the player from what? where? when?

- player weapons sometimes disappear when searching zombie gear (I'm unsure if he was really talking about zombies or dead survivers)
- player weapons sometimes disappear without doing anything

Hm strange, i think i know what the problem is thou.

- zombies are able to kill players in armored vehicles

Well we cant have people just driving around fearless inside armored vehicles. Would make things to easy!

The mine markers around the base seemed to be named by cardinal points but not correctly.

Again im not sure what you mean by this?

A survivor left my group on the ride back to the refugee camp. The first time I've noticed it was after disembarking at a medic tent at the entrance to heal and trying to make him disembark, too. He could've left my group minutes before, I don't know. The bug didn't repeat.

Hm strange, thought id fixed this bug, will look into it.

I don't know what happens when the military base had heavy loses and a supply convoy arrives. Will the soldiers be reinforced? Reinforcements could be added to the back of the supply truck in the case of a guard's death.

When you deliver a supply truck to the base any M2 gunners that have been killed will be replaced. However any patrolling soldiers will not.

Getting civilians alive out of the cascaded buildings of eg Ortego is a pain in the ass. They definitely shouldn't spawn there.

Civilians spawn pretty much in random locations, it would be impossible to detect weather they are in 'cascaded' building or not sadly.

Cheers again!
              Murphy.

[Trapper]

Sorry, I forgot about another bug:
When a player killed another player, me and another innocent player were showed the the court martial titletext-black screen and the black screen remained forever with the line "Fire!". The admin restarted the mission for us then.

Blocking crates:
If I understood him correctly, they spawned so sudden and close to the players that they stumble on them while running/driving away from zombies. Though he could also mean eg blocked staircases if you're spawning them in buildings. (I haven't seen a crate myself yet)
I think a 60m distant check of the random spawn location to any player before spawning a crate and repeating the random position calculation till a more distant place is found, should do it.

Armored vehicles:
Damn, I'm really a newb to this mission and I'm missing combat experience.
Are zombies able to damage manned vehicles by now? That should be possible to script anyway.
If so, unarmored and armored vehicles could be damaged by zombie attacks until immobility, while players are protected only inside of armored vehicles.

Mine markers:
N=north, E=east, S=south, W=west. If your intention was to name the four mine markers like that, then they aren't placed in the right order around the base.

Supply:
Ah, well if it doesn't screw the balance the patrols could be reinforced at least by mercenaries, too. 

Civilian spawn:
You did write that they are no longer spawning on the streets by now, so some kind of object check seems to be possible? Maybe there's a way to detect this cascaded building types distance to a calculated spawn point, to prevent a civil spawn on those objects.

[CrazyAce]

Armored vehicles:
...
Are zombies able to damage manned vehicles by now? That should be possible to script anyway.
If so, unarmored and armored vehicles could be damaged by zombie attacks until immobility, while players are protected only inside of armored vehicles.

I have to partly disagree with you on this guys. An armored vehicle like the BRDM should be invulnerable to zombie attacks especially when running them over. A car like the skoda should stay "able to be damaged" by running over zombies and zombies should be able to damage the car to explosion state. I ran a quick test with the military jeep and while being a gunner I was dead in 10 seconds... I guess I don't like how fast they respawn and out of thin air. 


BTW I'm having fun with this mod Just needs more... horror... I just wish I had a house of my own to buy and a trunk to place my valuables... mmm... valuables. I wonder if collecting junk and eating would get implemented?

[Trapper]

I'm just looking for a compromise with murphy on zombies damaging armored vehicles but would also prefer this to be realistic.

What about bad maintenance in the quarantine zone? All armored vehicles could be realistically invincible to attacks but have a 30%? chance of an illustrious engine failure per kilometer. With a big bang, much smoke effects and setfuel=0. 
Players would need to look for a gas station then, to get spare parts and repair the tank with them + one additional repair kit.
And when they're in the middle of a fallout with a broken ABC vehicle they'll definitely curse it. 

[D.murphy man]

Ill see what i can do with armored vehicles. Currently vehicles aren't damaged at all, just the players inside said vehicle.

Blocking crates - well crates are all randomly placed inside random buildings at the beginning of the mission. Of course occasionally you might come across a crate that 'hasnt found a home' yet and is still jumping around the place looking for a building that can be entered by players.

Mine markers - ha! my bad,ill change them round.

Supply convoy and reinforcements - it was more to do with the difficulty of spawning new soldiers and groups and getting them to patrol around rather then a balancing issue. It was a lot easier to just replace the M2 gunners, since there group leader is placed on a far off island so they are spawned into that group and mounted onto m2s. I will however look into this.

Civilian spawns - ill look into it, could you give me a bit more elaboration on what you mean by cascaded buildings?

@Crazy Ace
I'm not sure about eating, i found it a tad annoying feature in Sharanilife for example. I have looked into being able to set up camps and things. But I'm not sure if i could get zombies to target and attack static objects, if i can it could make some fun barricading and defending moments when your camp comes under attack.