(Review Completed) [SP/A3] BOBCAT v1.3 Final

[Gruntage]

Hi man,

Thanks for the feedback!

The briefing is better now. One thing still jumps at me, sorry... The last sentence in "Maintaining stealth" seems to contradict the sentence that you can use the drone after the AA is destroyed. Maybe this is exagerated too, I can't remember what was written there to be honest.

Yeah I can see why it might read as contradictory. I'll have a look at rewording it.

Other than that it might be just me but Sabre 2 wasn't much of use or needed. I parked him somewhere and continued on my own, getting to the objectives. However, when the alarm was raised and the show began, he took out some enemies from his position. And on the way back I took him with me and he got some there as well. So saying that he wasn't of use might be too hard. Let's say that it didn't give me thaaaat big advantage. But it's not a big deal.

To be honest, Sabre 2 really is there just in case you do need another pair of hands, maybe if you choose not to bother with stealth at all. I never really bothered with him because if you want to maintain stealth he might be more of a hindrance but the option is there. I like giving people options even if 9/10 players don't go for them, because there's always that one dude who's like, "I wish I wasn't solo".

This time I let me be spotted on purpose and tried to shoot my way through. This was, as it is often in Arma, full of action but also frustration (which is not your fault ). The AI is quite good though. Or I'm just bad, but I had the impression that their reaction and shooting was a bit too fast / too good.

To be honest the AI is generally either very good or bad  . From what I've seen in tests, the AI is just on the threshold of being too good. My worry is that if I weaken them further, then the mission will become too easy. The first playtest was like that and then I increased their skill only for them to be too strong. In the end I went for the middle ground.

I also noticed that the performance of the mission gets quite bad when the action starts. At first I had only 20 while before I had around 40. A little later it then climbed up to 25 or so - this was better.

Yep that's what bothers me most and there isn't an easy solution other than reducing the number of enemy personnel. The problem with that is that it will make the airfield too sparsely defended. It's a catch-22; reduce the number of troops and have the mission be perceived as unrealistic or too easy. I don't have a solution for this unfortunately other than perhaps reducing your view distance  . I do have a spawning script that brings out extra guys from the barracks when the alarm goes off, so maybe that's a contributing factor.

When aiming without the NVGs, there is a red tint over the screen, this might be an Arma bug. It comes, when you don't use the zoomed in scope mode.

Yeah I've noticed that as well and I've put it down to being an Arma bug, possibly relating to the post-processing in the mission.

And to finish my small report, I have an idea, for the case you want to add something. After all you declare the mission still as Alpha
You could add some civilians here and there. E.g. on / at that tower in the village where you start or some goat shepards. And if they see you, they run away, shouting "Americans" or in this case "Westeners" or whatever they call the enemies down there in the Sahara. Then a patrol could head out, searching this area.

That's a good idea! I'll have a look at implementing that! 

And before I forget it: This time I used the drone. Targeted the tower and activated the laser, but then I wasn't sure about what to do next. Spammed some buttons (e.g. the key for command fire in tanks) but I don't know if this made a difference. Eventually two rockets hit the tower and killed everyone inside.

Yeah from memory you have to switch the laser on and press T (?), then when you select missiles you'll see that the targeting reticle is slightly different. When you shoot the missile should lock on to the laser. Takes a bit of practice 

So all in all it again was a good and fun playthrough. Overall I might say that it's a bit easy to infiltrate the airfield. I guess that the player will be motivated enough at the first playthrough to get through a little bit harder challenge. Should be balanced well though. I'm also not sure if I had an advantage by disabling the electricity. It didn't seem to be too hard to get in, even if I had not disabled it.

There's a fine line to be drawn between what's easy and what's damn impossible with these missions. One extra watchtower here and there can be that difference. In time I'll see what other people say and if the general consensus is that the infiltration is too easy then I'll look at increasing the defenses. I do have to bear in mind the performance issue though and that's actually the reason why I'm tentative about adding more stuff.

I feel like there's something I'm missing when it comes to performance (FPS) because I wouldn't have thought a mission of this size would be causing framerate issues. It's not like I have tonne of scripts running at once. I don't wanna be so quick as to blame the game. Unfortunately I don't know enough about coding to be able to optimise what I've written, if indeed there's any optimisation to be done.

Unfortunately, the performance issue is what stops me from being really happy with this project, and I wish it wasn't this way.

Anyway, with regards to the generator, I think it's handy for when the player is looking to deal with the harder objectives like destroying the Kajmans, or even grabbing the intel. I didn't want to make the generator a necessity for the mission, but rather a handy tool just in case the player needs it. Option is there, basically.

EDIT: Just occurred to me that I could increase the amount of time that the base is without lighting for, making it potentially more useful, and perhaps the challenge coming from doing the mission without shutting the power off.

And a small addition: I liked the changes of the alarm system, good job.

Great! 

As always, thanks very much for the feedback!   

[Undeceived]

Yeah from memory you have to switch the laser on and press T (?), then when you select missiles you'll see that the targeting reticle is slightly different. When you shoot the missile should lock on to the laser. Takes a bit of practice 

Maybe you could add that help hint system that appears at the side where is says you can press H for help and then a small explanation how to use it.

To be honest, Sabre 2 really is there just in case you do need another pair of hands, maybe if you choose not to bother with stealth at all. I never really bothered with him because if you want to maintain stealth he might be more of a hindrance but the option is there. I like giving people options even if 9/10 players don't go for them, because there's always that one dude who's like, "I wish I wasn't solo".

Fair enough

[Gruntage]

Maybe you could add that help hint system that appears at the side where is says you can press H for help and then a small explanation how to use it.

Yeah that's a good idea. Will look at adding that! 

[Gruntage]

Minor hotfixes in the latest build which is now up (v1.15)

A section of the briefing has been reworded slightly for clarity. There have been a couple of hints added for the drone usage which should make things easier. Also, it's no longer possible to shoot up the FOB without punishment (sorry Inlesco  ).

Regarding possible new features to come, I'm probably going to add a new section to the briefing for some recon photos or satellite imagery. Though I am trying to avoid overkill in the briefing.

With regards to the addition of civilians as mentioned in a previous post, I need to think about this one a bit more. My initial impression was that it was a good idea, but now I'm not 100% sure. I don't know whether civilians would be tending their goat herds in the middle of the night. I mean, I'm not a shepherd so what do I know  . I also don't know whether civilians would be walking around the village in the middle of the night, shepherd or otherwise.

So I'll need to think about it and make a decision. The implementation isn't too much of a problem as I can use code I've already written for a different purpose. It's just whether it makes sense in my mind.

Thanks for the feedback so far!

[Undeceived]

A good shepherd never lets his flock alone.


EDIT:

Isn't it quite early in the evening when you chose the covert insertion? I remember something like 6 PM or so? That would justify civilians.

[Gruntage]

A good shepherd never lets his flock alone.

Yeah I guess you're right 

It's actually somewhere between 2-3am for the paradrop and about 1am for the undercover I think. I'll need to think about whether it makes sense; weigh up the pros and cons as I usually do.

[Gruntage]

So V1.2 Beta has been released but with only 1 of 2 intended additions. The new version is available to download on the original link.

As requested, a selection of satellite images have been included and are accessible in-game via the action menu in a rather neat dialog. These images would and should be in the briefing, but unfortunately you're limited to an image size of 367px x 256px in briefings; way too small for satellite images of the airfield. Perhaps mods allow larger images to be used in briefings but as I'd like to keep this mission mod-free, that option isn't open to me.

The other intended change which sadly was not included in this build was the addition of civilians in the AO. These civvies were supposed to react to the player and alert nearby troops. I spent a few days on the script in an empty scenario and the script worked almost perfectly. The only downside was that the AI civvies wouldn't always run away despite being told to by scripting commands; sometimes they would just stand there like lemons...not great.

Unfortunately when I merged that scenario and all of the component parts to the main mission, the script ceased to function properly. Troops were supposed to be alerted when the player was less than 5m away from a civilian but instead the troops were being alerted regardless of distance. Sound files which play when civvies are approached by the player simply play randomly. It makes no sense to me at all and I'm unable to replicate the problem elsewhere. A real shame since the script worked well in another scenario and would have been a nice addition.

Honestly at this point, I'm probably going to stop work on this mission for a while. People I've spoken to will know that this mission basically involved me fighting against the game for the better part of 4 months straight, and I'm pretty tired now. The experience has been a rather exhausting and frustrating one unfortunately. But I kept at it because I felt I had to make something for this game after so long. I honestly hope that Arma 4 will prove to be an easier game to work with editing-wise.

The mission still works well and is enjoyable from what I've heard, so at least it hasn't been for nothing. If I continue to edit in Arma 3 it will more than likely be on another project now. The mission is still available to download on Steam as I said, so the need for an official review isn't really necessary for me.

I'm still happy to receive feedback mind you, so there's no need for the mission to be carted off to the 'boneyard' as we call it. Bear in mind however that any massive changes (aside from minor hotfixes that are easy to fix) will be very slowly implemented if at all.

Thanks everyone for the time spent testing this mission; it's certainly in a better state than it was when it first released.

[Undeceived]

  It was a good editing and testing process.

[savedbygrace]

Well, well, well. Haven't been behind the rim of a scope in quite a while and it is certainly nice to be wetting my whistle with a lone wolf mission; my favorite after all. Jumping right in...

Intro

I only noticed a slight stutter when the camera scenes swapped and began moving. Really was not bad at all. Nice touch to add a cinematic summarizing the previous operation that leads to this current one. Couldn't help but feel that there is more to come with this Specops team and their exploits in the Sahara, after reading the Situation.

Briefing

I feel you covered everything that a team would need with the exception of what was on the dinner menu for the meeting
Those Sat images were excellent features. Even though it was all laid out on the map, the sat images made it feel special.

Dual insertion was a great option, however, I felt it was not far enough apart to provide a different or more difficult approach. I get it though; you were trying to place the player as close to the first objective as possible. I just feel you missed an opportunity to increase difficulty without adding a single unit to the mission.

Insertion

I chose the air drop first. I liked the red light green light touch. Always wanted to do that in OFP. I thought seeing all those patrols roving the desert with their flashlights was cool, and it made me feel awesome as I weaved through their routes. That is until I discovered that they are truly blind out there in the hills.  Anyways, since I have not played this game in years, it was a forgiving area to reacquaint myself with how to control the character.

Solar Power

I of course relayed the addaction problems from the powerpack and though you corrected it, another problem began happening. 37 seconds exactly after the power was cut, the entire airfield was alerted and flares popped off. No matter where I hid(I even stayed put next to the power pack), this happened. I even killed the group around the guard building to see if they detected me. Of course that seemed to alert the base anyways because no repairman spawned in after that. So, I just reloaded and began shooting the lights out on my own. This actually proved more beneficial than the power outage because when it worked, it was only out for 3 minutes or so. A note on that spawning though...feels cheaty to me. When I took out the men in front, I was expecting to see one or more inside. Can you place one in there that's joined to the others(out of formation) just so it appears legit? No biggie, if not.

Across the Play land

My very first play through, I was able to weave around the airfield without killing anyone but one unit, who I spotted with NVGs and I was not sure if he would spot me or not. I know you said in our conversation on steam that some have them but this

the enemy lacks night vision equipment and relies on base lighting

did not actually make that clear. I assumed that none had them, Not a big deal either.
     I had loads of fun observing the patrol routes, and finding the weak avenues. After about the 5th play through, I had become so comfortable that I was literally squat walking for much of the way, popping the lights out from distances and placing explosives between every vehicle (in the buildings area). This statement

as explosive charges can only be detonated from a maximum of 600m

did not prove accurate for me. 300m was the furthest I could get before losing control of a device. This forced me to place my explosives (satchels at the meeting building) and order the go ahead from the hangar near the heli tarmac. Which was okay with me, because I could then get my urban warfare on and exfil the hard way. A noteworthy mention here is, locking certain doors was nice but having enemy patrols reacting to open doors, fantastic immersion! The lone guy sunbathing in the unnatural light in building A did not make sense to me until my last play through when I shot a light out above the meeting building and he reacted. Nice.

Also, the anti personnel mines, claymores and maybe even the anti tank mines(never tried those) should be excluded from the fired list as well. I was very disappointed that I could not ambush the enemy with those after the go ahead chaos.

Exfil

First time, I grabbed a truck and raced for the exfil. This was boring. So, I instead chose different routes for each subsequent play through and I must say my favorite was when I decided to exit the wall on the south side and trek through the village. It was empty but I had enough baddies trying to track me that I didn't mind it so much. I was so loaded with antipersonnel mines at that point that I would have to rest and engage before pushing on. Sadly, they didn't hit my mines as they chased me but it felt good to finally be able to place them. From there, I just had to check out the exclamation markers that you had on the map. Pretty sure you had thoughts of adding another objective in there for that base but since you're not, just delete those trucks or use them somewhere else.

A note on the perimeter vehicle patrols...one of the vehicles eventually catches up to the other and their effectiveness deteriorates. Syncing two of their waypoints would prevent this.

The foot patrol on the road adjacent to the solar field can sometimes be ran over by those mean vehicle patrols. I thought the other units may recognize that as an alarm but they seem to ignore the body. The remaining foot patrol is set to alert for a time but they relax again after a while.

Outro

I joined sabre 2 on my last play through and left him in his shanty in order to benefit from the command view and observe enemy reactions and stuff and forgot to gather him up. Good to see he still made it to the chopper.    oops.

I was confused with that last scene of the helos lifting off. Didn't we already call in the air assault?

Last note but not a biggie. The mission never ticks off in the scenario listing once complete.

No showstoppers so, I'll get started on the review. Let men know when/if you make changes to it.

[Gruntage]

Thanks very much for the feedback SBG. I will have a look at the points you mentioned before the mission is reviewed. It's the middle of the night here so I'll make another post later today addressing points. The power shutoff seems very strange since there's nothing that links the power scripts with the alarm script. The only reason I can think of for why the alarm would be raised would be a body being detected. Did you kill the two guys near the transformer/generator? If so, did you move their bodies away? Does the issue occur when you first disable the generator or on subsequent disablings?

At the moment I'm not able to explain why the alarm would be going off. I might have to re-engineer the power shutoff mechanic entirely in order to fix it. Assuming it happens every time, the disabling of the generator shouldn't and mustn't act as an alarm activator. Worst case scenario is I give the player the option of disabling the power for a short time, but have emergency backup power come on after a random amount of time; no repairman in other words.

[savedbygrace]

The very first thing I did on the replay after your changes was check the disable feature. At first, it was straight to it, on my belly. The second try, I made sure to stay in that spot for a while to make sure I was undetected before saving and trying the disable feature.

Before I posted, I started a new test to make sure it was not a freak thing. It still did it. And no there was no one I killed prior to arriving on the spot.

I did quite a bit of testing to see if I could be detected any other way. while in that solar area. I killed both guys, shot the lights out, interacted with one of the dead enemy that the vehicle patrol ran over, ran around in the solar panels while the vehicle moved by but nothing tripped the alarm until I disabled the power.

Sorry guy. I know you want to be done with this one. And I can still review it as is because the mission is playable all the way through. Just will have to make mention of it in the review.

[Gruntage]

Very strange and frustrating issue indeed. All I did was remove the action being added in the script  . The detection script works on 'knowsabout' so the only theory I have is the value spiking but I have no earthly idea what would cause it do so, and do so consistently. Ugh, I hate issues I can't explain or fix. I might have to remove the feature entirely if I can't find a solution. A few have questioned the usefulness of the power being switched off so perhaps it's removable wouldn't be as catastrophic as I think.

The solution of course might be to just simplify the mechanic down.

In any case, please don't review until I've managed to find a solution.

[Gruntage]

Alright, now that I'm awake I can address some points 

I only noticed a slight stutter when the camera scenes swapped and began moving. Really was not bad at all. Nice touch to add a cinematic summarizing the previous operation that leads to this current one. Couldn't help but feel that there is more to come with this Specops team and their exploits in the Sahara, after reading the Situation.

Thanks! I've left the mission open for a sequel should I decide to dive back into editing again properly.

Dual insertion was a great option, however, I felt it was not far enough apart to provide a different or more difficult approach. I get it though; you were trying to place the player as close to the first objective as possible. I just feel you missed an opportunity to increase difficulty without adding a single unit to the mission.

I don't think a big difference in difficulty was really what I was aiming for with the dual insertion, but rather just simply a strategic choice based on what objectives are up. If the intel was located in the south of the base for example, then that makes the civilian insertion more compelling. If the 'neophron' objective was up, then that might compel the player to go for the paradrop insertion. Both insertions have their pros and cons of course.

I think there was also a conscious effort to make sure that the mission didn't become a running simulator. A very early version of the mission had the paradrop insertion further away from the AO and the player wished that they had a vehicle despite the mission being stealth in nature. Back then there was a bigger difference but I think it came at the expense of player enjoyment and engagement with the mission. What I've found is people want to get into the action as quickly as possible and not feel inclined to press the + button; so the paradrop insertion was moved closer and consequently the difference between the insertions was blurred a little.

Also I think the insertion placement was designed to take into account all objectives rather than just the first.

I understand that the difference between the two insertions is not exactly night and day, but I think I've done a decent job at balancing them whilst ensuring that there is at least some difference between them. I think I just see the insertion choice differently; not so much in terms of difficulty, but rather just giving the player choice of strategy. Difficulty wasn't the focus is what I'm saying.

I know you mentioned that adding units wouldn't be necessary but perhaps a couple of well-placed guards in the village area could make a noticable difference in difficulty.

It's fine if we have differing views on these things by the way. I'm not saying your perspective is wrong, far from it. By all means state what you think and feel in the review if/when we come to that.

I don't have access to the briefing as I currently post this so if the briefing dresses the civilian insertion up as being considerably more difficult then I might need to reword it a bit.

I chose the air drop first. I liked the red light green light touch. Always wanted to do that in OFP. I thought seeing all those patrols roving the desert with their flashlights was cool, and it made me feel awesome as I weaved through their routes. That is until I discovered that they are truly blind out there in the hills.

Yeah I wish it were possible to show the player jumping out  . Despite a lot of testing, it's not possible unfortunately.

As far as the AI is concerned. You'd be amazed how different the perspectives I've heard when it comes to the AI. I've had people tell me that the AI is too accurate; too punishing and that they can't finish the mission. I did early tests with the AI wearing NVG and...yeahhh those guys are too strong  . I think AI balancing is one of those neverending battles, but I think I've hit a sweet spot where the AI is not too good but also not terrible either.

I also get a kick out of weaving between the patrols  . They are random of course which means that some playthroughs could be more challenging because the groups happen to be closer together.

Regarding the power transformer/generator, as mentioned earlier I think this will need re-engineering or re-designing, most likely in the form of simplification. I don't want to remove the feature but if I need to make substantial differences to it in order to make it work, then so be it. I think the script suffers from being more complicated than it needs to be especially since the 'benefit' the mechanic provides is not a huge one. Just bear in mind that the new version of this mechanic could very well differ greatly from its current state. It's a shame because I was really happy with how it worked, especially since it was stress tested (though admittedly I didn't switch off the generator multiple times as you did, hence why that specific issue slipped through the net).

It's very strange that this issue should happen now after removing an addaction command of all things. The problem may always have been there of course and the addaction removal somehow revealed the issue.

EDIT: Update on the generator issue. It's very difficult to solve a problem that doesn't make logical sense. As I suspected, there's no reason why the alarm script should be firing. Interestingly, the bug would appear a random amount of time after disabling the power, rather than being a consistent 37 seconds. I removed code line by line until eventually I got the bug to disappear but at the expense of the 'repair' script. For some reason, the 'alarm' variable is being made true despite nothing from any script telling it to do so. It's completely bonkers and stupid. But it's not the first time that the game has thrown an unsolvable problem at me.

The solution it seems is to do away with the repairman entirely and have power be restored from a backup generator a random amount of time after power is disabled. If the bug persists, then I think I'll have to remove the generator from the mission and just chalk it up to Arma nonsense. What's absolutely insane about this is that the detection within the mission runs on knowsabout values (1.4 or higher triggers the alarm), and yet when the bug occurs and the alarm script fires, the player's knowsabout value is 0! Absolutely bewildering.

I will clarify in the briefing that the enemy have limited quantities of night vision equipment, in order to clear up any confusion.

as explosive charges can only be detonated from a maximum of 600m

Yeah I've gotten my radius and diameter mixed up. Should be 300m; will fix this.

I did wonder whether anyone would notice the AI reacting to doors being open  . There was an earlier version where if the AI saw an open door then they would investigate the building with the open door. Unfortunately though the AI pathfinding wasn't good enough for this work consistently. When it did work though it was really cool; had a voice line and everything 

The lone guy sunbathing in the unnatural light in building A

Yeah discipline is a little lax in Kalb's army and so this guy just chills out inside rather than actively patrol  . Wanted to try and make it so the enemy soldiers were not complete drones.

Also, the anti personnel mines, claymores and maybe even the anti tank mines(never tried those) should be excluded from the fired list as well. I was very disappointed that I could not ambush the enemy with those after the go ahead chaos.

I will look into implementing this. I was trying to avoid the issue of explosions happening around the base and the AI not reacting. I haven't tested claymores so I don't know if the player can use them without the AI reacting in some way.

just delete those trucks or use them somewhere else.

Forgot about those. Will remove.

Syncing two of their waypoints would prevent this.

Will experiment with this and see if it works.

I was confused with that last scene of the helos lifting off. Didn't we already call in the air assault?

The helos you see in the outro are there to further support the ground assault as they move to mop up the airfield. The assault you saw in the mission is more of a QRF to take immediate advantage of the 'clear sky' so to speak. It wouldn't have been possible to have ground forces in position ready to assault the airfield immediately because the enemy would likely spot them prior to the mission, and therefore the base would have been on even higher alert.

Think of the outro as being more of a continuation of the assault you saw in the mission rather than being different.

I can clarify this in the briefing though if needed.

The mission never ticks off in the scenario listing once complete.

Yeah unfortunately from what I can tell, this is more of a BIS problem. Essentially in order to get a mission to tick off on steam you have to use the BIS_fnc_Endmission function . The problem is that despite using this command, the mission doesn't tick off. It turns out that the solution is to have the same function be used at the end of the outro. The problem though is that you always get a debriefing window when you use the function, which, at the end of an outro, looks incredibly jarring and out of place. To make it worse, the debriefing window you get in the outro is blank; it doesn't take into account what you did during the mission itself.

I've also tried using the command 'markAsFinishedOnSteam' but that doesn't seem to work either. I might be using this command incorrectly but it does say that it marks the current mission as finished on steam.

In any case, I haven't been able to get this to work. I certainly don't want the outro to be spoiled by an annoying debrief window. You can disable the debriefing completely, but I don't think that's something anyone would want.

If anyone does have any ideas on how to get this to work by all means let me know; it's possible I've missed something.

Speaking of the outro, I'll add your name to the beta testers list as well.

I think that covers everything for now. The biggest problem is the power generator. Even though it's not technically a showstopper, to me it is because it's a feature that currently doesn't work as it should and spoils the mission currently. I'm going to try and retain as much of the feature as possible rather than going down the easy route and simplifying it.

Thanks very much for your feedback  .....not as bad as I thought it would be!!   

[savedbygrace]

Just to clarify something. My feedback has no intent or judgment behind it. I'm sorry if I sound as if I'm questioning your creativity. You guys invest too much time into these artworks to have to defend your choices. I'm glad we're all different; otherwise we wouldn't be surprised. Feel free to change or not change whatever you want, just as long as there are no showstopper, it can be reviewed.

[Gruntage]

Don't worry about it, man. I always appreciate your feedback and any mission I make will be better for it. Sorry if I come across as defensive; I always try to make sure that whoever is giving feedback, be it criticism or otherwise, knows the reasons behind any decisions I've made.

I'm making some changes to the mission currently and I've taken the mission down off Steam until they're done.

Thanks,
Gruntage