[CAMP] Black Lands 1.2

[Undeceived]

Nothing. I was just kidding.

Wait a minute - he doesn't (or shouldn't) automatically start talking when you approach him. Only when you select the option to talk to him. Or when you steal the bike while he is outside (will call the cops in that case).

And when you chose to say that you want to distract him, he goes inside to prepare his stuff - then you can steal the bike. Did this not work like this?

About him giving the bike to the player: That's rather unrealistic because he needs it for his work.
I don'want other cars to be available for stealing, because then I would have to implement consequences for each and everyone of it. But I have an idea how the player can get one (but he'll have to work for it).

[Mad_Cheese]

Hey Undeceived,

I tested with 1.62 official on veteran, no mods or beta

Campaign Intro:Mission 1:Mission 2: Awakening

I liked the sneaking but I took a very safe route. Great idea with the secret bucket sign!

Mission 3: Starting to inflame again

The cutscene in the church was the first time I got slightly bored and therefore lost my concentration. But I see what you are trying to do and it was mentioned before. The briefing is extremelyMission 4:Overall:

[savedbygrace]

Haha, I am going to be picky here but as a reply to your comment.

About him giving the bike to the player: That's rather unrealistic because he needs it for his work.

Door salesman that have ever arrived at my door have always needed a way of carrying the sample product to demonstrate for the potential customer. I can't imagine this guy hauling a vacuum cleaner on the rear bracket of that bike.  Just kidding you pal, I have to give you tough time or you wouldn't feel the love.

It dawned on me that I didn't elaborate on my tactics in mission 3. I'll do so now because it seems that no one else has attempted the same approach, it may be of some help to your future edits.

The gun flaws truly ruin the mission since I can walk the streets and shoot on sight without anyone questioning my ruthless slaughter. Correcting this would certainly improve that portion for sure. But, I refused to win the mission that way, so after having my play test of running people down, blasting them in the face with cool resolve and casually taunting guards who warn me to back away from the door, I reloaded and attempted the mission while keeping the play as it should be.

The target is positioned perfectly. I wandered around, looking for an angle to take him out from a distance but could not find one that afforded a reasonable escape route. As soon as the target or his guard is killed, the guns begin to blaze without era. I finally grew the balls to take out the rear guard, front guard, responding guard and enter the cafe from behind the front counter. I shot the target and instantly the inner guard begins to blast away. Since I was covered by the counter, I made my escape with minimal collateral damage and made it a good distance before the alarm began to sound. I gained access to the roof of an industrial hopper plant and watched the patrols for a while. I could have had some serious fun with this escape but felt like I was pressured from time, so I became careless. After dying in the process, I reload and this time, I use a satchel that I took off of the dead rear guard. Walked around to the bmp without engaging any others, and placed the satchel where the blast would reach the target through the windows while keeping the bartender protected by solid walls (This took several attempts). I then walked as far as I could before detonating the charge. After that, the escape was pretty easy. Not sure how you could change this except remove the satchels from the spetz since they are not on a mission that requires them. To penalize the player for using something he finds in the mission could ruin the game play and creative tactics he employs.

Hope this is useful.

[Undeceived]

Finally it's weekend and I can find some time to answer.
THANK YOU, guys!! Your input (approval AND criticism) really is great.


Mad_Chese:

Stealing the fuel truck did not tick off

Did you take the truck to the camp in the forest at the first try? The task should only tick off then.

No, the curfew is only in effect at night. At day it is not. I'm not familiar how to write time information in English - would 6:30 PM be right? That's how I wrote it in the briefing but it might be capable of being misunderstood.

There are two possible locations for the killing of the agents: One in the village around Kamil's house (in case you come to his house unarmed) and the other one is at another place more to the north near an abandoned lumber mill (in case you come to Kamil's house with non hidden gun).
Would be important for me to know which of both mission endings you had and where exactly you were seen or how it happened that the mission failed.

Are you planning to get this voice-acted?

Well, I was planning it at the beginning (definitely). But with the 19 missions plus cutscenes the amount of dialogs grew that much that I'm not even sure anymore. Poor voice actors, in the case I decide to really do it.


savedbygrace:

Mission 3:

Yeah, I'll look into what you (and also M_C) mentioned about the reaction of the AI when player is armed / not armed / when the target is dead, etc.

And yes, I'll remove the satchels from the Spetsnaz. You're right, they don't need them on their body guard mission.


@ All:
Can one of you please set the sound settings like this (effects and music) and run the intro scene again to see if the music still is too loud / distorted?




Thanks again, the reports helped a lot!

-> I have practically finished the missions 5-11 for the next release*. But I think it's better if I fix 1-4 first... It will take me some more time though.


* Please be patient with my linguistic skills in the rest of the campaign as well. My wife helped me a bit with the translation in the first two or three missions but then she gave it up because of the huge amount of text. The expression should be even more strange for you English-native guys - so every help with it would be much appreciated (to be honest I depend on you here...   ).

And one last thing: Yes, there is a shift from cutscenes to gameplay in the next missions. There still are cutscenes but not as many as in the first 3 or 4 missions.

[Undeceived]

Hello everyone.

Thanks for your tests and your feedback!

The next release is ready (version 1.1 - missions 1-11). The download is in the first post.


Version 1.1 - Notes:
- @ beta testers: If you don't want to test the missions 1-4 again, you can start playing at mission 5 right away (of course it would be much appreciated if you began from mission 1 again! ). The player character will carry only a preset handgun, so you should not have the problem to run around without gear.
- There is a number of bug fixes and optimizations in missions 1-4 but I didn't change everything you guys mentioned in your beta tests. There are things where I'm still unsure how to solve them and they might be adressed in the next releases.

[savedbygrace]

I haven't forgotten your stringtables pal. I was halfway through and was diverted to other duties. But I will certainly get it done and give your mission another test from start as soon as time permits.

[Undeceived]

Thanks, SBG. No stress with the stringtables.

[SaOk]

Havent yet got far - I am in 3rd mission, but have been enjoying it much. Only bug I saw was an extra actor standing near the barn door when player left it running. Cinema is really thrilling and well-made. Almost like playing a movie again. Missions have been more straighforward, especially the first mission could have some more ambient life and other scenery/event e.g. at distant that player could see while running. But great already. I will try to have better feedback when playing the new version more far.

[bedges]

This has all the makings of OFP Resistance campaign for Arma2. I'm really looking forward to this.

However, I'm currently at the start of the third mission, and I'm sorry to say I ain't going to play no more. Why?

Well, I spent quite a bit of time in the second mission scoping out the area, then attacking one of the roadblocks and arming myself to the teeth, only to be given a single silenced pistol in the next mission. That won't do.

Similary, I started out with an M1911 only to have that vanish, replaced by a Makarov...

All that immersion created by awesome cutscenes and music, and then boof: no loadout carryover. Not good 

[SaOk]

I use this code for that weapon transfer if you end up needing it:

Before mission ends:

Code: [Select]

PlCo = [weapons leader player,magazines leader player,damage leader player];
saveVar "PlCo";
In next mission init.sqf (place to early lines.):

Code: [Select]

if (!isnil("PlCo")) then {
removeallweapons player;
_we = PlCo select 0;
_ma = PlCo select 1;
{player addweapon _x;} foreach _we;
{player addmagazine _x;} foreach _ma;
             player setdamage (PlCo select 2);
};
Havent included possible backbag.

[Undeceived]

bedges, thanks for this honest feedback. I have to confess that you're right. I didn't think much about that aspect. In some of the missions the story is told in such a way that the player finds himself without the gear of the last mission, but particularly for the third mission - as you mentioned it - it should not be a problem to give the player the weapons from mission 2. I'll look into that and make it possible for the player to use his equipment there. But it will be quite hard for him if he wants to use unsilenced weapons. But at least he has the choice.
Anyway - good point!

If you give it another chance, I could tell you how it continues. The equipment will pass from 3 to 4, but (again) not from 4 to 5. In mission 5 the men are going undercover again (at least at the start). But from mission 5 ahead until 10 or so the equipment is always carried over, as the incidents are immediately connected to each others.
I won't spoil much here but after that sequence of connected missions something in the story will happen which will turn around everything...


Talking generally: The carryover of the equipment is not yet polished in all missions - some bugs might still happen, but I'll fix that. And - thanks again for your thoughts - I'll give the player the stuff from mission 2 (as mission 3 happens only some hours later).




@ Sa0k:
Thanks, mate! If you have time - check some of my scripts. I borrowed that exact (absolutely awesome) code from your campaign (of course you've got credits right in these scripts - in ReadMe too). Thanks again!

[bedges]

Indeed there can be many story-driven reasons to strip weapons from the player, and I admit that the cutscene in the church at the end of the second mission may have had one of those reasons in it. However, all I got was a bunch of well-chosen camera angles with no speech and no subtitles, so if the reason was there, I missed it.

You hit the nail on the head about choice. In (awesome) missions such as yours which are story-driven you can take a lot of liberty with the player's situation: think up a good enough reason in the plot and you can get away with just about anything. That said, these are real-time sandbox games which encourage the player to strategise. The mission may involve quietly neutralising a character, so a silenced pistol makes sense, but what if the player wants to create a fall-back point in a dark alleyway where s/he stashes a bunch of weapons picked up in a previous mission?

Arma2 allows for that, so your story needs to have a pretty good justification for taking that feature away.

I was kidding about not playing further; of course I will. Looks awesome so far.  

[Inlesco]

Another report incoming! This time I didn't have enough time to play from the beginning. I decided to start from Martin's List. Loads of feedback and suggestions below.

Martin's List

The mission is quite linear, but since the storyline is the key of your campaign, this is reasonable and fine. I waited for the bus, seeing people joining me at the bus stop. Then proceeded to the church. Now, this part was chaotic - somehow conversation texts ran on each other and the friend left without any explanation what's next. Well, I placed the objects in the church, stole a vehicle and reached the ambush position. Nothing to see, proceeding to ammo stack. Everything went fine - I fully prepared for the primary objective. The convoy's movement was weird due to A2 AI incapability of driving. I blew up the convoy and retreated to Prud, later moving to the east.

Suggestions:

a) use unitCapture and unitPlay for the bus and convoy's UAZ to avoid unpredictable movement. Of course, that could affect the performance.
b) make the bus arrival at the Novy Sobor smoother - it's kind of messed up now.
c) create some random (or not) conversations while moving in the bus or waiting for it.


Martin's List 2

Interesting mission with several unexpected events. IMO - it's fine as it is now. There's a fair balance between difficulty and enjoyment here. After destroying the generators and fleeing away, I felt like playing another cat&mouse game.


Inner Abscess

A typical storyline-driven campaign scenario with linear elements. Nonetheless, I liked the uncertainty. Eventfulness always increases the enjoyability. This is resistance-type campaign after all.

Currently, I think this mission is solid and fits nicely.


Alexej Pribotow

This one is a bit messed up. Somehow I found myself inside Chernogorsk, although according to briefing I was outside of it. I suppose this is a simple bug  - easily fixed. Hunting down Pribotow was weird at times - his car stopped and the driver and Pribotow disappeared. I approached the nearby house carefully and they suddenly were moved back - running away again. Later, I reached the gate full of hostiles - killed everybody, found Pribotow unarmed (that's weird for such an enemy). Then disappeared into the forest and hide.

Suggestions:

a) Pribotow's capture - you may change the scene to something more believable. For example - player has to carefully approach the house because the traitor is armed. When the distance is < 5, a cutscene starts, player shouting to put down his weapon, he has no chance to escape, etc.


Petrovka Strike

A moderate mission, containing both weak and strong features. Here's what I outlined as improvements.

Suggestions:

1) add a music track at the start, so Chapter 3 will impress more.
2) The pilot at Gvozhdino could be able to communicate with player's team and report that enemy T90 has left in Tomas' direction after the ammo truck was hit or if the player is taking too much time and the pilot will cancel the flight soon. I'd like to see a time limit to reach the pilot.
3) after the in-game cutscene, add a check if the player hasn't left the pre-set sniper's position or is too close to the village and can get spotted. It'd make things more realistic.
4) set appropriate viewDistance in the init.sqf, so the player couldn't change visibility to have a  more clear aim on the target.
5) Pilot's chopper should fenced in. Who knows when some outsider will decide to steal or damage it.
6) A sudden decrease of view distance looked weird.
7) Elipses 'Investigate' get green (completed (I assume)) without player really checking out that particular area.
8. Place some objetcts inside the farm building, so Tomek could hide behind or between something. (for realism.)
9) Nemec could hide in the shed and player should knock in when close to it, saying some code-word. (I suppose it's dangerous for a mayor to stand outside in a forest.)
10) Add optional objectives like 'take control of Russian artillery / mortars' or 'steal a patrol vehicle' to make camp elimination objective easier. IMO - flexibility is the best way.
11) To make this mission more interesting, you should create a simple dialogue between the player and pilot to somehow convince him to fly in hostile area.


Resurrection:

All started nicely - pumping up the emotions and seeing the story develop, etc. Still, several flaws were obvious and IMO need to be solved for the version.

Suggestions:

1) Use disableUserInput 'true/false' in scene after Tomas' friend was hit from behind because when player gets down you can still use Num pad and see for yourself what's behind - nobody.
2) make sure that player doesn't have a change to kill all hostiles. I did and the scripted death always caught me running away.


Back to Safety

A trigger at the house found by moving in direction of the moon didn't activate. But you can fix it anytime. However, an in-game cutscene would be better than strange conversation when player can run and do stupid things.


Overall

So far so good. The cutscenes were nice, especially the Inception-like after Resurrection mission. I assume most of the players are not the fans of in-game cutscenes, but sometimes they're unavoidable.

All in all - great work. Looking to forward to this campaign. Hopefully, this feedback will help to improve the quality bit by bit. Can't wait to continue Tomas' adventure in Chernarus.

[Undeceived]

Perfect, Inlesco! Thanks a lot for your feedback! Great suggestions too.

[Mad_Cheese]

Hey Undeceived

Tested on regular with Arma 1.62 + latest beta.

I started with the first mission again because I was interested what you had changed.

Mission 1+2:

Nothing to add.


Mission 3: Starting to inflame again:

The barman stays alive this time, i reloaded a lot to see if it happened at some point. All good. I can however still run around with the handgun and kill everyone outside the bar without resistance, only if I cross an invisible line (inside the bar) or kill the officer all hell breaks loose. Later at the barn, I had the impression that the AI reacted much better this time. Not sure if you changed teir behavior or they just had a good day.


Mission 4: Setting up time:

I remembered all weapons and magazines i stole in mission 3 to see if they were transported to mission 4. The good news is - they were all there. The bad news is: I had no handgun. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with it, but when mission 3 finished I was in a stolen UAZ. The UAZ was gone at the start of mission 4, which is hard to avoid I guess.
Just an observation, it is possible to have both conversations in the beginning simultaniously.
Unfortunately, having no handgun screwed up the mission big time for me. I couldn't sneak up to the russian base and then infiltrate it at a good position. No matter how I approached, I was quickly pinned down and while time passed, more and more reinforcements arrive at the base. After roughly 70 reloaded savegames I decided to use endmission, pinned down in a barn surrounded by 4 armored vehicles. I am sure this would not have happened without the missing handgun, maybe you can add an extra one to the weapon crate.

Mission 5: Martin's list

Very nice and funny detail with the rocker car in the beginning. The AI's pathfinding also made it look like the driver was drunk 
I had problems to get off the bus, after dropping us off it would back up and crush Kamil, thus failing the mission. Luckily you had an autosave just before the drop off, so allthough it took a few attempts it wasn't to problematic. But as Inlesco suggested, this can be fixed with unitplay. The bus also ran into a house after the drop off, which would be fixed as well). Another thing, Kamil took me into a backyard where nothing happened on my first two attempts. On the third try, he took me to the car, a bit further down the road. Must be the AI pathfinding. A mapmarker would fix this.
The setup, robbing a weapon stash and ambushing a convoy, is terrific. BUT i think the player needs a little bit more time. I took out the guards at the weaponstash quickly but lost some time after being tied down by incoming enemies. With a bit more time, I could have prepared a better ambush. I'm just talking about 1-2 minutes here, it would still put the player under pressure.

Mission 6: Martin's List 2:

I'm not sure if the cutscene was the outro of mission 5 or the intro of mission 6. However, it is awesome. I love how you use the most mundane features of Chernarus, it might sound silly but it really brings the country and characters to life. I'm talking about simple stuff like a bus stop or in this case a little lake with a pier - it's great.

The mission is a  great classic stealth scenario, a lot of fun and very detailed. I spotted no bugs.

Mission 7: Inner Abscess

This one also worked completrely bug free for me. The twist in the storyline is unexpected and adds to the movie type feel this campaign has.

Mission 8: Alexej pribotov

I experienced similar bugs as Inlesco did. Unexpectedly, the mission started inside of the car, at the parking lot, and the lines in the cutscene overlapped ( a mix of storytelling and dialog), repeated and made no sense. There was also random fade in's and fade outs - I can't really explain, but it felt like there was two camscripts running at the same time. Also the fades and some text continued while the actual gameplay had already started. While following the car, some text displays were triggered, their content indicated that that the mission should have indeed started outside of the city. Some of the chat conversations is displayed twice, also the task to follow Pribotov is displayed twice (see .rar file with screenshots).
However, the rest of the mission plays smoothly and finishes. Great idea with the gps marker by the way. Only thing to be mentioned is that while the mission finished, I was being engaged by a hind - if the mission had not ended chances are high it would have killed me.

Mission 9: Petrovka Strike

The mission starts with a scripterror:

Code: [Select]

Tomas setGroupID "Tomas";
TomasF setgroupID "Tomas";
Error: Nicht definierte Variable in Ausdruck: tomasF
File
Campaigns\und_blacklands1_1beta\missions\09petrovkastrike.Chernarus\init.sqf,
line 60
Another convoy ambush - I absolutely love these and I have to say, I have never been immersed into the resistance role like this before. The assasination and it's setting was also superb. After the assasination, there is a bit too much running for my taste... It's 2km to the castle and just before arriving I have to change course into Grishno which is pretty far again. I fail to change weapons after I took out a patrol in the woods and find myself in a close combat environment with a heavy sniper rifle and a pistol. It takes me ages to survive an attempt to steal a weapon of a dead spetznas in town. The enemy AI behaves very well.

Moving on.. I can imagine this was done purposely, but two of the angry guys in the forest have no weapons on them. Taking out the russian camp proved to be very hard, but not impossible as it turned out. One guy in the forest does have an rpg, but it takes effort to prevent him from wasting it on foot soldiers. I hid my guys in a forest, snuck into the base and used the AA gun to take out the vehicles.

After the attack, I properly armed my units and managed to get away just before reinforcements arrived. This was good because the BTR would have slaughtered my men on the way to the truck if I hadn't done so.

This is a very long mission. It has enough content to make two, maybe even three whole missions. It is not a problem, but I feel that facing so much armor needs to be balanced out a little bit by giving the player appropriate weaponry before attacking the camp. The joining units in the forest could have a car with another rpg for the player to use.

Mission 10: Resurrection

This mission mainly serves to develop the story and it does a tremendously good job. I found the setting of the arrest very dramatic. The following cutscene has a great twist. The first half of it, where Dimitri reveals he is the head of the Red Star - well it is already great and detailed but the second half with the KSK rescuing Tomas had me sitting infront of the screen with a dropped jaw. AWESOME!!! Really... wtf!


Conclusion:

The campaign is on a great path. Yes, there is some issues that need to be adressed, but the quality is huge. Storyline, characters, cutscenes and last but not least mission design and gameplay. All top notch if the bugs are fixed. I played the campaign in german this time, and all lines made perfect sense, never cheesy, but very fitting all the time. Great effort btw to write this huge amount of text in two languages.

Here's the file with screenshots of some errors that came up
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29770617/Blacklands%20Screenshots.rar

Like I was hoping, the weight is shifted from cutscenes to gameplay while the campaign goes on. I am thrilled to play the remaining missions of this campaign.