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Author Topic: (Review Completed) [SP] Operation Hungry-Birds  (Read 16930 times)

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Offline h-

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.0 fixed
« Reply #45 on: 02 Feb 2011, 17:23:17 »
I did play this the other night but unfortunately I'm not really any good at writing any review-like things..
So here's a very incoherrent list of things that came to mind when playing it:


First of all the mission is basically just insane  :D
My statistic showed probably 100 kills or more, regular enemy soldiers count alone was somewhere in the 60's..


My pet peeve has always been the cutscenes, basically because I rarely see one that has been made so that it doesn't annoy me since they are not even close to what actual picture composition, rhythm etc should be.
I found the intro movie to be too slow (lot's of pointless camera flying around a terrain) and a bit pointless all together, don't even really remember what happened in it.. But that doesn't mean you should change it, it's just my opinnion.


The briefing was good, although Fox and Foxtrot mean the same in mil-lingo, Fox is usually just an abreviation of Foxtrot which can a bit confusing.
Some language things that sound odd to me or could be improved:
- "NO ONE has to survive" -> "NO ONE must survive".
- Then all occurrences of "..go to.." could be better using phrases like "proceed to" or "move out to", sounds more militaryish.
- "in the old factory" -> "in the old factory area". "In the factory" means the same as inside the factory building..
- "enemy's airbase" -> "enemy airbase"
- it says "evacuation zone" in the briefing but the marker says "evacuation point"
There was also some minor mistakes in the radio chatters, just forgot to write them down. What I remember is that there were consistent "i'm" instead of "I'm" and "russian" instead of "Russian", and some missing "the"..


I have a love/hate relationship with the silenced HK. Whilst it's obviously my fave (along with the silenced Bizon) because it is silent on the other hand it is way too underpowered and inaccurate over longer distances which means you have to get pretty close to be effective with it, which leads to your own demise very often. So I tend to run out of ammo with it pretty fast as I like to keep my engaging distances in the 200's at least. In the mission I ended up doing so that after some initial threats were dealt with I switched my HK to some enemy AK and then came back for it after the situation was cleared. I also ended up giving the AI excess HK ammo so that I could then use theirs when running out of mine..


I didn't look how you had made the mission (nor read anything said about it here before hand) but I got the feeling that there is some randomness going on. Liked how I, especially after dealing with the convoy would suddenly run into some enemy popping up behind some hill completely catching me off guard who on replay would not be there.
Also although I was at first annoyed how you had packed the convoy ambush point with quite large concentration of enemies but it worked very well because you would have to hurry up cleaning the place to be able to make the ambush.


The enemy forces in the whole mission were completely overwhelming but thanks to the OFP AI it is manageable. For example at the old factory at first I thought there is no way in hell I can ever complete the mission but after a while I remembered how the OFP AI is and it became more or less a turkey shoot. I have to point out though that I am quite bad at playing nowadays because all my time spent with Arma is used for modding it and I quite rarely touch OFP so I got my ass handed to me at various points quite frequently even  ::)
What I found odd at the factory phase of the mission was that after the factory realised it is under attack at some point a group of tank crew comes running at me from the hills, which made me wonder have they initially meant to come at me with some armor.. There was one lone patrolling T-72 and a almost completely blind BMP there though.


The arty thing was quite nice, single shots were accurate enough to do some artysniping although would have liked it to be a tad more accurate maybe.
The backup squad at the airbase could probably be larger because, like usually, the AI lead group gets slaughtered in the first few meters and basically provide zero help.
And I was secretly hoping there would be a few Bizon's stored in the various ammo boxes throughout the mission but didn't find any :P


Didn't find anything that would have been broken, the mission seemed to work well. Although there's always the "hunt for the last enemy" phase when the objective just won't get accomplished because someone somewhere is laying in some bush. Was very long mission but didn't get boring at any point so don't really have anything bad to say about it.
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Offline OFP_f3d3

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.0 fixed
« Reply #46 on: 02 Feb 2011, 19:40:42 »
Thanks a lot for this feedback, it seriously needed some fresh revision.
Quote
My statistic showed probably 100 kills or more, regular enemy soldiers count alone was somewhere in the 60's..
Quote
My pet peeve has always been the cutscenes, basically because I rarely see one that has been made so that it doesn't annoy me since they are not even close to what actual picture composition, rhythm etc should be.
I found the intro movie to be too slow (lot's of pointless camera flying around a terrain) and a bit pointless all together, don't even really remember what happened in it.. But that doesn't mean you should change it, it's just my opinnion.
Quote
The briefing was good, although Fox and Foxtrot mean the same in mil-lingo, Fox is usually just an abreviation of Foxtrot which can a bit confusing.
Some language things that sound odd to me or could be improved:
- "NO ONE has to survive" -> "NO ONE must survive".
- Then all occurrences of "..go to.." could be better using phrases like "proceed to" or "move out to", sounds more militaryish.
- "in the old factory" -> "in the old factory area". "In the factory" means the same as inside the factory building..
- "enemy's airbase" -> "enemy airbase"
- it says "evacuation zone" in the briefing but the marker says "evacuation point"
There was also some minor mistakes in the radio chatters, just forgot to write them down. What I remember is that there were consistent "i'm" instead of "I'm" and "russian" instead of "Russian", and some missing "the"..
Quote
I have a love/hate relationship with the silenced HK. Whilst it's obviously my fave (along with the silenced Bizon) because it is silent on the other hand it is way too underpowered and inaccurate over longer distances which means you have to get pretty close to be effective with it, which leads to your own demise very often. So I tend to run out of ammo with it pretty fast as I like to keep my engaging distances in the 200's at least. In the mission I ended up doing so that after some initial threats were dealt with I switched my HK to some enemy AK and then came back for it after the situation was cleared. I also ended up giving the AI excess HK ammo so that I could then use theirs when running out of mine..


I didn't look how you had made the mission (nor read anything said about it here before hand) but I got the feeling that there is some randomness going on. Liked how I, especially after dealing with the convoy would suddenly run into some enemy popping up behind some hill completely catching me off guard who on replay would not be there.
Also although I was at first annoyed how you had packed the convoy ambush point with quite large concentration of enemies but it worked very well because you would have to hurry up cleaning the place to be able to make the ambush.
Quote
The enemy forces in the whole mission were completely overwhelming but thanks to the OFP AI it is manageable. For example at the old factory at first I thought there is no way in hell I can ever complete the mission but after a while I remembered how the OFP AI is and it became more or less a turkey shoot. I have to point out though that I am quite bad at playing nowadays because all my time spent with Arma is used for modding it and I quite rarely touch OFP so I got my ass handed to me at various points quite frequently even  Roll Eyes
What I found odd at the factory phase of the mission was that after the factory realised it is under attack at some point a group of tank crew comes running at me from the hills, which made me wonder have they initially meant to come at me with some armor.. There was one lone patrolling T-72 and a almost completely blind BMP there though.

With "" Overwhelming "" youmean that there were too much or they were too much and also inteligent?? (Please choose the second option :cool2:)

Quote
The arty thing was quite nice, single shots were accurate enough to do some artysniping although would have liked it to be a tad more accurate maybe.
The backup squad at the airbase could probably be larger because, like usually, the AI lead group gets slaughtered in the first few meters and basically provide zero help.
And I was secretly hoping there would be a few Bizon's stored in the various ammo boxes throughout the mission but didn't find any Tongue

I think that a ship at 50 miles away from the place can have a 2 centimetre mistake in the postion of the shell. :)

Quote
Didn't find anything that would have been broken, the mission seemed to work well. Although there's always the "hunt for the last enemy" phase when the objective just won't get accomplished because someone somewhere is laying in some bush. Was very long mission but didn't get boring at any point so don't really have anything bad to say about it.
Nothing in the world is as certain as death.

Offline h-

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.0 fixed
« Reply #47 on: 02 Feb 2011, 20:08:30 »
Quote
With "" Overwhelming "" youmean that there were too much or they were too much and also inteligent??
It has been so long time I played OFP last that I have almost completely forgotten how the AI usually works (I'm speaking of the enemy AI), but what I saw I think was what they always did, although static MGs seemed to be much more deadly than I remembered..

So wouldn't say they were noticeably intelligent, basically what I remember them being (the little I do).
If you mean that were they intelligently set up, well, I guess they were.

With overwhelming I mean that there seems to be an endless supply of them.  :P
But as OFP AI is a bit "slow" their numbers don't really matter after you get the hang of what they're about (if you haven't played OFP for a long time) it's somewhat easy to defeat them.
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INFORMATIVE THREAD TITLES PLEASE. "PLEASE HELP" IS NOT ONE..
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Offline OFP_f3d3

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.0 fixed
« Reply #48 on: 03 Feb 2011, 19:16:57 »
new version available.
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Offline savedbygrace

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.1 Minor fixes
« Reply #49 on: 03 Feb 2011, 22:50:53 »
I'll stop playing the old version and test this one soon.

Offline OFP_f3d3

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.1 Minor fixes
« Reply #50 on: 04 Feb 2011, 22:14:58 »
Nothing in the world is as certain as death.

Walter_E_Kurtz

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.1 Minor fixes
« Reply #51 on: 09 Feb 2011, 03:25:08 »
Testing version 2.1 (03 Feb)

Readme
   - needs updating to latest version number
   - should include the title of the mission
   - I reckon that quite a bit of info on previous versions could be deleted, as could the Known Bugs section


Description.ext
   - the OnLoadMission="Somewhere on the coast of east Nogova" should be corrected to, for instance, "In western Nogova"


Briefing
   - needs checking throroughly for capitalisation, particularly I and Russian

Airbase objective
   - remove repetitions:
Eliminate the enemy presence at the enemy air base. You can ask for help to Foxtrot squad (0,0,1), located close to the base, to help you.

Known Enemy Forces
   - spelling of 'machineguns'; and Kamov doesn't need to be in capitals
   - since the camp at Bj53 has been so precisely located, it may as well be marked and linked to
   - link to the marker at Petrovice
   - inaccurate and redundant use of the word east in "air base east" - leave it out.


Mission
   - I was in Cadet mode to see the markers. Everything was proceeding fine until the factory: having cleared the site and checked off the objective, the waypoint stubbornly refused to move from near the flagpole. I think this is because you have edited the WAYPOINT's condition to read "this", when the default condition should read simply "true".


Edit: Oh, and in the Briefing page about Friendly Forces, in the LST Liberty section you say 20 artillery rounds are available when you actually have 30.

Edit 2: I have completed the mission and, so far as I can tell, everything else worked as intended - the airbase got cleared out and a boat came to pick us up. However, the mission ended before we even boarded the boat. I didn't notice any mention of the Vulcan and M60 tank that assist Foxtrot anywhere in the briefing. The only other problem was that the Documents objective didn't check off; I think it can be added to doc.sqs as follows:
Code: (doc.sqs) [Select]
ap playmove "FXShow4"
titletext ["So these are the documents...","PLAIN DOWN"]
ap removeaction 0

"7" objStatus "Done"
I also removed the speed factor from the titleText line. Default is fine; '3', as you had it, kept the text on screen for ages.
« Last Edit: 10 Feb 2011, 21:37:13 by Walter_E_Kurtz »

Offline OFP_f3d3

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.1 Minor fixes
« Reply #52 on: 12 Feb 2011, 18:05:06 »
Thanks a lot for your time Walter: :good:
Quote
Readme
   - needs updating to latest version number
   - should include the title of the mission
   - I reckon that quite a bit of info on previous versions could be deleted, as could the Known Bugs section.
Very true, i always forget to update the readme. :D

Quote
Description.ext
   - the OnLoadMission="Somewhere on the coast of east Nogova" should be corrected to, for instance, "In western Nogova"
Quote
Briefing
   - needs checking throroughly for capitalisation, particularly I and Russian

Airbase objective
   - remove repetitions:
Eliminate the enemy presence at the enemy air base. You can ask for help to Foxtrot squad (0,0,1), located close to the base, to help you.

Known Enemy Forces
   - spelling of 'machineguns'; and Kamov doesn't need to be in capitals
   - since the camp at Bj53 has been so precisely located, it may as well be marked and linked to
   - link to the marker at Petrovice
   - inaccurate and redundant use of the word east in "air base east" - leave it out.
Quote
Mission
   - I was in Cadet mode to see the markers. Everything was proceeding fine until the factory: having cleared the site and checked off the objective, the waypoint stubbornly refused to move from near the flagpole. I think this is because you have edited the WAYPOINT's condition to read "this", when the default condition should read simply "true".
Quote
Edit: Oh, and in the Briefing page about Friendly Forces, in the LST Liberty section you say 20 artillery rounds are available when you actually have 30.

Edit 2: I have completed the mission and, so far as I can tell, everything else worked as intended - the airbase got cleared out and a boat came to pick us up. However, the mission ended before we even boarded the boat. I didn't notice any mention of the Vulcan and M60 tank that assist Foxtrot anywhere in the briefing. The only other problem was that the Documents objective didn't check off; I think it can be added to doc.sqs as follows:
Code: (doc.sqs)

ap playmove "FXShow4"
titletext ["So these are the documents...","PLAIN DOWN"]
ap removeaction 0

"7" objStatus "Done"
Nothing in the world is as certain as death.

Offline OFP_f3d3

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #53 on: 19 Feb 2011, 20:08:50 »
new version 2.2
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Offline Zipper5

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #54 on: 28 Feb 2011, 19:10:39 »
Operation Hungry-Birds by OFP_f3d3
v2.2

Played with:
  • OFP v1.96
  • All AI settings set to full, Super AI enabled

Overview:
Looks just fine. Nothing to change here.

Intro:
I felt it was a bit too long and nothing really happened in it. It also seemed to give away too much of what the mission was going to contain. You might want to look into reducing it and making it more of an intro to the storyline rather than a "showcase" of the mission, as it is now. Also, during the scene where the Black Op views the city through his binoculars it would be good to get rid of the cinematic borders while it shows the binocular RSC, as right now it looks a bit odd.

Briefing:
I could only spot two real flaws with the briefing: the whole "you start here" doesn't need to be an objective, and the the last objective on the first page spills over onto the second. Otherwise it was very detailed and explanatory, and there was also a limited gear selection included.

Mission:
Christ, this is one of the hardest missions I've played in a long time, but I think it's far too overwhelmingly difficult, at least the way I played it.

It seems like I'm a squad of 5 Black Ops going up against almost the entire Soviet army, mostly lacking AT weapons which becomes a huge nuisance later on. Sure, we have Foxtrot supporting us when we attack the airfield, but the Shilkas there tear their helicopter to pieces as a result of said lack of AT weaponry. But by far the biggest issues in the mission are the actual Snipers that appear almost out of nowhere and hit you within 3 shots, and the PK "snipers" that are in most of the squads which, when there's more than one of them, gun you down in mere seconds from huge distances.

I went to each Soviet installation before attacking the airbase. I lost all of my men attacking just the crossroads at the start of the mission having already destroyed the convoy using just 4 satchels. None of the Soviet installations, despite having crates scattered all around, had any AT weaponry. None of the Soviet soldiers had any RPGs or AT4s either. On top of that, every useful armed vehicle I came across was locked. In the end I just ended up leveling all of them with the huge supply of satchel charges at my disposal. I figured the omission of AT weapons was intentional until I attacked the airbase.

Suddenly I was all on my own, two Shilkas had ripped apart Foxtrot as they came in, and the airbase even had T-72s roaming around. I gave up at this point. I had no AT weapons to take them on, I was already injured thanks to the two snipers at the southern end of the airfield (I was attacking from the northwest as I had just come from the ammo depot) and I had no support. I don't know if it was intentional, or if I missed something that would significantly help along the way, but this turned into way too much of a "Rambo" mission for my liking. Instead of 1 normal soldier and 4 brain-dead ones, it became just the 1 normal solider against the remnants of the Soviet army. Way too difficult for me, and I consider myself an above-average player. I had already used up my 30 rounds of artillery on my assault on the factory, which did work very well.

Aside from the unreal difficulty of the mission, there were a couple other issues: I didn't attack the crossroads and then ambush the convoy, I did it in reverse, and as a result the waypoint for ambushing the convoy remained there even after I destroyed it and the objective was complete. I had to actually walk up to the waypoint and wait a few seconds. Also, the AI civilians I saved from just above the base, for some reason, ran into the base and stayed there. I would have expected them to run in the direction of Petrovice or Mirov, i.e. back home, rather right into their captors' base. Finally, the factory objective wouldn't complete until I destroyed everything in the factory, despite it only saying that no one can leave there alive, implicating that you need only kill the soldiers occupying the base. Many of the random patrols no where near the base also seemed tied to the trigger that deems it clear, despite the fact they aren't involved in its defense in any way.

So yes, after over an hour of playing it, I think the mission is far, far too hard. Far too many Soviets, far too few friendlies, and far too little ammunition. If I missed something along the way, then please let me know and I'll test it again, but I think the odds in this mission needs some serious balancing.

Walter_E_Kurtz

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #55 on: 28 Feb 2011, 22:50:55 »
You so lame! ::)

Super AI enabled
   Probably your first mistake as this will make all enemies into experts, hence the PK "snipers". It also removes much of your black-op teams' advantage over the enemy.

Lack of AT weaponry
   There's at least one Carl Gustav launcher in the truck and more ammo. There's also LAW ammo, but I think you have to take the launcher in the briefing. In my opinion, the weapons selection is key as your team and the truck amount to little more than mobile ammo crates while you rampage across that quarter of the island.

AI Civilians
   Frankly, they're 'Normal for Nogova'. I'd like to think they're looters.

Factory Objective
   More likely a case of one last loon. I'm surprised your artillery didn't catch him, but I think you can guess where to check.


I anticipate reviewing this mission next weekend.

Offline Zipper5

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #56 on: 01 Mar 2011, 12:58:16 »
I always play with Super AI enabled, even in Arma 2. In fact, I have since circa 2005. I recognize that sniper machinegunners are related to that but it still doesn't change the fact that the odds in the mission seem ridiculously imbalanced. It's reminiscent of the Un-Impossible Mission, but even that gave you a few more squad members to work with.

I had no idea the truck and crates around it had any usage, it wasn't talked about at all in the briefing as far as I could tell. If I had known it contained all the AT it did, well, I'd have been able to complete the mission. Perhaps a note saying that you have a civilian truck loaded with AT would be a good thing in the briefing. I thought I was totally limited to what was in the gear selection. Knowing this, I'll give the mission another try.

In regards to the factory it actually seemed more like the trigger was counting static OPFOR vehicles as "OPFOR", and was waiting for them to be "Not present" in the trigger area. I searched high and low in the factory but I'll admit it's possible that one of them may have clipped into one of the non-enterable tents and was stuck there. Nonetheless, it was nothing 9 satchel charges couldn't solve.

Offline bedges

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #57 on: 01 Mar 2011, 20:28:56 »
Super AI: it's the only way for a vet to play  :good:

I gave this a whirl this evening: OFP, no addons - sounded good to me. General thought is, it is good as a beginner-intermediate editor's mission goes.

I watched the intro and thought: choppers at the airfield. That will be my first objective, convoy or no convoy. So after carefully kitting out the squad (no bins or sidearms or AT for the lads) we proned it at x4 staggered column to the desert, where I happened across an Mi17 full of troops with crew outside, who I dispatched, then sat outside the door as each cargo loon disembarked and was given a facefull of HK.

Into the chopper, over to the airfield, rockets into everything, convoy had by this time reached the airstrip, rockets for them too, over to the factory, rockets for everyone...

And then I got a mission failed. Nothing ticked off apart from the starting objective, the convoy and evac. See attached.

And then I got the outro telling me I had done well, and the enemy had nothing left to fight with.

 :dunno:
« Last Edit: 01 Mar 2011, 20:42:01 by bedges »

Offline OFP_f3d3

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #58 on: 01 Mar 2011, 21:56:30 »
Bedges:

Quote
I watched the intro and thought: choppers at the airfield. That will be my first objective, convoy or no convoy. So after carefully kitting out the squad (no bins or sidearms or AT for the lads) we proned it at x4 staggered column to the desert, where I happened across an Mi17 full of troops with crew outside, who I dispatched, then sat outside the door as each cargo loon disembarked and was given a facefull of HK.
Quote
I always play with Super AI enabled, even in Arma 2. In fact, I have since circa 2005. I recognize that sniper machinegunners are related to that but it still doesn't change the fact that the odds in the mission seem ridiculously imbalanced. It's reminiscent of the Un-Impossible Mission, but even that gave you a few more squad members to work with.

I had no idea the truck and crates around it had any usage, it wasn't talked about at all in the briefing as far as I could tell. If I had known it contained all the AT it did, well, I'd have been able to complete the mission. Perhaps a note saying that you have a civilian truck loaded with AT would be a good thing in the briefing. I thought I was totally limited to what was in the gear selection. Knowing this, I'll give the mission another try.

In regards to the factory it actually seemed more like the trigger was counting static OPFOR vehicles as "OPFOR", and was waiting for them to be "Not present" in the trigger area. I searched high and low in the factory but I'll admit it's possible that one of them may have clipped into one of the non-enterable tents and was stuck there. Nonetheless, it was nothing 9 satchel charges couldn't solve.
Nothing in the world is as certain as death.

Offline haroon1992

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Re: Please Review me! Operation Hungry-Birds 2.2 new version
« Reply #59 on: 02 Mar 2011, 12:02:50 »
Quote
Into the chopper, over to the airfield, rockets into everything, convoy had by this time reached the airstrip, rockets for them too, over to the factory, rockets for everyone...

LOL, you seemed to have had a good time rocketing everyone.  :D
Very busy with life, business, and other stuff. Away from OFP for months. Not sure if I could get back onto it. :(