(Review complete) [SP/QG] End Point Campaign Mission 1 - Mountain Thunder

[Rejen]

Title: Mountain Thunder
Author: Rejenorst/Rejn
Mission Version: 1.0
Download:

Download link:
http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=3974&comments=1


Gametype: SP
Role: SLA Infantryman
Island: United Sahrani
Time: Midday/afternoon
Side: OPFOR
Required Game/Patch: ArmA 1.14 and Queens Gambit


This is a short ingame gameplay movie of the mission while it was still in beta stages:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GohbF38wpk


Campaign Story:
The mission takes place in 2009 after the reunification of Sahrani.
A short summary of the prior events are as follows:
Mass poverty and human rights abuses cause a general outcry against the RACS' occupation of North Sahrani. During the RACS puppet elections one of the candidates (General Garcia) storms the North Sahrani broadcasting station and demands the withdrawal of RACS forces from N.S., threatening the use of biological weapons should the RACS not comply.
Russia steps in to try and calm the situation by offering to help rebuild the N.S. government but the U.S. questions the Russian agenda in N.S. A weakend South Sahrani Monarchy takes General Garcia's threats very seriously and decides to withdraw most of its forces but leaves a few battalions behind in the mountain areas of N.S. just incase. However by the time the South realizes Garcia's bluff it is to late as Russian political intervention becomes a new incalculable threat. Tensions flare as a potential cold war scenario is rekindled. Refer to the campaign intro video.


Mission Story
You have been recruited into the Foreign Service Regiment which is attached to the North Sahrani 2nd Airborne Division. The Foreign service regiment acts as a foreign recruiter for Russian funded SLA operations in North Sahrani. Shortly after your arrival a helicopter belonging to the interim N.S. government is shot down over the Sierra Masbete. Your battalion is mobilized to surround the mountain range and eventually to engage the enemy. Your company's target is an observation post half way up the mountain which overlooks the only road linking Bagango to Pita Airbase.

Mission Gameplay Style
The mission is heavily action orientated with a cinematic feel, the player is not a one man army however and fights alongside an entire company of friendly units to complete the objective.

Features:
    -Fully Voice acted charachters
    -Custom made music
    -Intro cutscene and brief intro to mission cutscene
    -My own fully voice acted Artillery script which is called in by friendly and enemy AI.
   

Addons:
    - Uses some buildings from warfare. Patch 1.14
    -ArmA: Queen's Gambit
   

Credits:

    -Thanks to Lt.Cameron Mcdonald and Sparks50 for beta testing.

Known bugs:

    -In the end cutscene which is not an outro you may notice units stop firing at each other.

Still to do:

    -Add this mission to a campaign of 5-10 missions if I get the time.

[Zipper5]

Ah, I was looking forward to when you would submit this mission here Rejen. Played this mission a number of times and loved it. The Cause, as well, is probably my favorite ArmA campaign, so I'm glad you put that here too. I'll try to get some test reports up soon.

[Rejen]

Thanks man glad you liked it. I got approached by someone from OFPEC a while ago to submit these missions here but was in the Philippines at the time and have since had to delete my bi forums messages so forgot to respond
Anyway decided to follow up on that

Thanks again. 

[Undeceived]

Hi Rejen!

I'll check this mission out soon, too. I liked the trailer very much, well done!!

See ya.

[Rejen]

Thanks mate Hope you enjoy it 


EDIT: Just thoughts I'd show this little vid I uploaded 3 weeks ago, its not from the actual mission but just shows the artillery script in action for Bravo Battery along with the voices. I decided to make it one cannon for now while Victor Battery which fires at fixed positions has 3 cannons assigned to it.

I also coded a script that allows for shell whizz sounds to play once the shell is 300-100 meters or so from the ground.
The markers you see in the video are not in the actual mission except the target one which pops up when a target is called in by 2nd platoon Echelon squad.

If the artillery shell misses its target the observer tells the Battery to adjust its fire accordingly and the next time the artillery fires it adjusts its arc of fire.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=GNzR97mpGDM

 

[savedbygrace]

Got a play on this one tonight. First time I have encountered your work and I must say, I am amazed at your ability to maintain the accents completely through each sentence. It nearly disguises the tone of your vocals in many cases.
I must also Highlight your ability to write thorough text with context, relevance, depth and connection to reality without losing sight of the mission. All too often, editor's focus on gameplay only, (which is not entirely a bad thing) but they forget the simple things such as fluid conversation which brings the mission to life and allows the player to forget that it's a game momentarily. Your chosen camera angles are complimentary toward the point you are pushing and maintain focus where it is supposed to be.
Overview
Near perfect, contains everything that the overview should have. The cinema border was a negative IMO because the black header and footer only removed from the mood.

Intro
Ingenius start to the whole bit, with the recruiter covering the details and all. Stuttering, hesitation, repetitiveness took it to the next level and brought the reality of human nature to bear. The only thing missing was the background noise of paper being shuffled and a keyboard being used and perhaps a pen on paper scribbling out a signature. The plane flyby was a good way to transition the whole thing without wasting time on minor details.

Mission
Humor...the resenting Paki and the pride filled American, what a combo. I was surprised you were able to maintain the paki accent while speeding the speech up at the end. good work.

At the long winded briefing is where you lost me though. Not that the voice was bad. But there was a lot of info to give the player at start up. The fact that I had control of myself is what caused this I feel, because once you handed control to me, I wanted to get on with it, and my focus was on looking around rather than listening.
The continuous radio chatter was great for ambiance but if I was suppose to listen to pick up something, I would have missed it with all the run here and there stuff. The singing in the truck was done nicely as well as you off'd the timing a bit of each to allow the human factor to sneak in there.

The gameplay was greatly effected by the AI being able to spot me through bushes and such while I can't see them.
That has always been a damper in my book. The fight was tough and spread out pretty good. I will also mention here as I mentioned to Bardosy about his dead removal script..... make it so that the dead will not get sunk unless it is a certain distance from the player.
If you were trying to accomplish the feeling of confusion with the player by cramming all of that info into him, shoving him into a new landscape in the midst of an already active battle with radio transmissions filling the airwaves in continuous streams.......you were successful. I was confused and was not sure of what I was doing except that I knew who the enemy was and that I was suppose to pull the trigger when I seen em.

I think what I will take away from this mission is the presentation and storytelling. The objectives were familiar (to put it nicely) and the approach was a bit on the frustrating side as it highlighted the flaw of the Super allseeing AI.

Replayability? Only to view the Intro again. But Keep up the great storytelling, Rejen..perhaps it will rub off on others.

[Rejen]

Hi there Savedbygrace,

Some great feedback there and I have to agree with you about the mission itself. I am a little dissapointed with this mission but it has served greatly as did The Cause Campaign to experiment with new scripts such as artillery.

I plan on recycling my artillery script for this one for future missions I am also contemplating releasing it to the community after some minor adjustments.

This mission is or was essentially a capture the hill mission. I still seem to be in love with WW2 tactics and am not employing more modern military scenarios.

The long winded briefing should have really been cut down a notch, I decided to include it for those that don't read the mission overviews etc. Ultimately I guess my missions have been tailored for fans of Call of Duty who want a good 20 mins of cinematic shoot em up action. This is something I'd like to balance out in my upcoming missions.

Anyway glad you enjoyed the mission thanks again for the great feedback and I will definately follow your advice in future missions. Keeping fingers crossed for ARMA2 especially its NPC interaction  

[Undeceived]

Hello Rejen!

I finished the mission now and here comed a small feedback.


OVERVIEW:
- Well done but it confuses me that the picture shows a RACS man, since in the mission I am supposed to play a guy of the SLA. But I think that in the context of the whole campaign this is not a problem.

INTRO:
- Great voices! But you could make the voices more different as almost all persons in the intro seem to have the same voice.
- You have to check the timing of spoken sentences and the subtitles. The subtitles often came too late.

MISSION:
- Good one with the Paki and the American!!!
- I repared that the briefing had no subtitles. This made it be pretty boring because English is not my native language and I didn't understand anything. Like savedbygrace I looked around and... at the first try of the mission I shot the silly officer in the head just to make him shut up! And hey! You even added a consequence for this (Mission failed!). Very good!
- But the voices and harsh tone here were fantastic!!!
- The singing troops in the truck: Cool idea which really added atmosphere to the mission but the singing is too low, barely could hear it (maybe this is due to my sound settings, I don't know...).
- The music could be louder too.
- The "Special thanks to Sparks50" subtitle did not disappear, it remained on the screen a long while.
- When the troops were climbing the mountain there appeared an error message (see attachment).
- I don't know what the others think about it but: In my opinion there was way too much radio communication... It was pretty confusing the most of the time...
- This led me to the conclusion that overall the mission is very chaotic. I never knew what my current objective was (apart from the main one -> to seize and take the whole mountain). Maybe there's a way to give the player a better overview about what is happening at the moment, for example by giving him more objectives (step by step)?
- By all means it was impossible to stay with the squad because of their stupid ArmA behaviour, like running directly into the fire of an enemy squad or being scattered all over the mountain... I don't know how many times I called "Where are you?" but: The leader tells me his position and dies a moment after this. The next leader is 250 meters away, etc., etc... So it was not possible to become a better overview by going with the squad.
- Sometimes the subtitles do not match with the spoken words, sometimes there are missing sentences in the subtitles.

OUTRO:
- Great cinematics!! Here the chaos is clearly visible because RACS and SLA run disordered across each other and just try to escape this place which after a few moments turns into a hell... Well done!

OVERALL:
Well, I think that by reducing the chaos of the radio communication and by breaking up the main objective in smaller orders this mission would receive a lot more of immersion and atmosphere than it has now already. Good work, keep it up, Rejen!! Thanks.

Edit:
I removed the attachment because the error came by other cause. Never mind.

[Zipper5]

Were you playing with any AI voice enhancements such as DSAI, 6thSense Pack 1, etc.? I never got that error message and inside the mission there is no sound file called "medic2" so it's more than likely an error with one of your mods you were running.

[Undeceived]

Aah, yes, thanks for this hint, Zipper! Yes, CSM2 is the "evildoer"! I thought that I had played only with the req. addons but I forgot that I had enabled the sound mod too.

So forget that point with the error message, Rejen.

[Rejen]

Hi Undeceived

Thank you for the really good feedback you've made several very good points which I hadn't addressed in my mission such as the chaos and the lack of knowing where to go or what to do.
I think the chaos I was aiming for but players should still have some overview which if not present means I am confusing the players to much.
I should have placed more emphasis on taking the hill and added some small objectives as well.

Out of curiosity, what is your native language? I speak English and German and a little bit of French.

Thanks again 

[Undeceived]

Well, I am German with some knowledges of English (sometimes with the help of this baby here ) and I also speak Portuguese fluently (lived in Brazil for 8,5 years).
What about you? Just looking at your name I always thought you were from the Netherlands. It looks a little bit like a typical Dutch name (I mean Rejenorst).

You're welcome, mate!! Thank you for the mission making!

[Rejen]

I was actually born in Germany so spreche Ich noch ein bissel Deutsch hehehe...
But have lived in Australia most of my life. 

[Zipper5]

Mountain Thunder by Rejen
From the campaign "End Point"
v1.0

Package:
Not really important because this is a mission that will be included in a campaign and has only been separated for testing purposes.

Overview:
Could possibly use a border apart from the default cinematic borders, but it's fine as it is. The picture of the RACS soldier is a bit misleading, but you find out later where it is from and what relevance it has to the mission.

Intro:
As with The Cause, this is an excellent cinematic introduction to the mission. As others have said, the subtitles could be a little better timed with the voices as a lot of people understand English when it's written but not spoken. However, the voices were, as always, excellently done and so was the music. I only found two typos, and they were in the third scene where Captain Becker is talking to the soldiers:

Code: [Select]

"Thats what youre being paid for." => "That's what you're being paid for."
Other than that, a very fitting and well-made introduction to the mission.

Briefing:
Starts off short and simple but adds more objectives as the mission progresses. I liked the picture of the paw, does it have relevance to something in the campaign that we later find out? Or earlier, even? Guess we'll have to wait to find out.

Mission:
I liked the starting cinematic. As others have said, your voice acting is most impressive. I must admit, I like the character of Captain Becker (maybe that's because my first name's also Thomas, heh). Obviously, this mission is going to be included in a campaign but it was strange seeing my name as James Gardner in the intro and then having myself called Zipper5 in the mission. Though I'm sure you're going to change this when the campaign is released.

As said before, the "Special thanks to Sparks50" part does stay on for a while and is a little bit distracting. However, it's not a big deal. It's not like it was making us miss an important part of the mission and it was nice to see you give credit to people who helped you with the mission. The singing part was good, and how the music track tied in was even better. I only noticed one typo in one of the radio messages:

Code: [Select]

"Whats the status on our AA request?" => "What's the status on our AA request?"
The mission itself was fast paced, interesting and exciting throughout. The amount of enemies did seem never ending at times and I presume that's because you use a spawn script as you do with friendly reinforcements. The radio messages for the artillery were nice but most of the time I didn't pay much attention to them and they were some times distracting, but not often. The cinematic at the end of the mission was also well done and it was a very interesting way to end the mission. It really did make me want to play the next one. I saw that one of the guys was referring to you as James, so I presume more character development is done at some point? Or the character at least speaks to someone, heh.

Outro:
None, but as this is only one mission from an unfinished campaign not having one is not an issue.

Overall:
A fun and exciting beginning to what is looking like to be a great campaign like The Cause. You work, Rejen, is very impressive. Lots of mission makers could and should learn from what you do. I look forward to seeing future installments of both The Cause and End Point, plus any other projects you decide to do in the future. Keep it up!

[johnnyboy]

Wow.  This mission seriously kicks ass!   

Mission Picture

The text "Break the silence in helping..." does not make sense to me.  Maybe use "while" instead of "in".  Regardless, until you play the mission, you have know idea what "Break the silence" means...

Intro

Excellent.  As all have said, your voice acting is professional.  Puts my cheesy Spanish accent in Last Tango in Bagango to shame...

Briefing

Informative.  No complaints, other than could use links to markers.  One spelling error:  "unerving" -> "unnerving".

Mission

- Great start song.  Is this really yours?  (You say music by Rejenorst...)
- Enjoyed Paki vs US dialogue.
- Verbal briefing is complicated and long, so I didn't catch it all.  If its important for player to grasp, then add it to the briefing (maybe as new objectives).  Otherwise, no problem.
- When driving off, cannons begin to fire.  Keeps it interesting...nice touch.
- Some of the chatter text shows up on globalchat or sidechat as "Spanish unknown".
- Guys singing is another brilliant touch.  How do you get more than one sound file to play simultaneously?
- RPGs screaming down from hill top were very cool.
- Artillery sounds and chatter very cool. 
- Tanks lighting up guys on hill were cool.
- Chatter and chaos impressive.
- This is a hard mission.  Took me many tries to complete it.  However, it never got old.
- Long range open fights lets the ARMA AI do pretty well.  Especially when there are many present.  Its very cool to watch squads advance, returning fire.  Example: While I'm reloading, a RACS pops out from some bushes about 20 yards in front of me, and 5 of my squaddies open up all at once and cut him down.
- I had a tough time hiding behind sandbags at top of the hill when many RACS kept coming, and I ran out of ammo.  Tense moment... see jpg. 
- Final movie very cinematic and righteous!

Overall

Good on ya mate!  Very little tweaking required on this first mission.  Greatly looking forward to the next installment. This is going to be one hell of a campaign.

BTW, I loved The Cause.  My favorite line was "You ARE the reinforcements, you stupid bugger!!!!".  Classic.