ARMA III

[Cpre5]

Re: ARMA III

Just got back into arma, been playing Arma 3 Life.

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

That sounds amazing man....can the community play your creations? Like could a few of us join and and play with you?

If I ever actually completed it and uploaded it and everyone DL'd. None of the mods or addons are mine though, so I receive no credit. Right now I am still going through the files trying to find out what everything is so I can replace the default units with the ones from a Vietnam pack.

If I ever actually do complete it all the way, I would ask the creators of both packs for the permission to release it to the public, but right now I can't say whether I will get it done or not. If I don't, I am sure someone else will eventually, especially with Unsung on its way.

I love the Vietnam era the best, that's why I am going through this extra effort to try and do my own little merging of creations. Hopefully I know what I am doing. If you have seen the African DUWS, that's what I am aiming for with the Vietnam packs I have.

[ChubbyBanana]

Re: ARMA III

Need this game to go on sale again. Missed it during winter sale and dragged my feet until it was back up to full price.

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

This game has some of the best lighting, if not the best lighting, that I have ever seen in a game. It's what I feel makes this game look so photo-realistic at times.

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Those are taken straight out of gameplay.

And in case you are wondering why I am standing so close to the Vietnam soldiers. I was in the edior playing around and had it set to where I was invisible to the ai. I kept spawning soliders all over making them fight and was calling in air support to just watch the war firsthand. I got to follow some poor US soldier who crawled through some grass just to get lit up by 4 Vietcong soldiers at once.

[kingsofthevalley]

Re: ARMA III

I used to love ARMAII, and will pick this up if ever get around to getting another pc gaming setup. One question though, is the A.I. better now? Do they actually utilize cover and concealment, or do they still just move in the open while shooting?

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

Vanilla AI is the old ghost recon ai of lie down and rotate when shot at. A mod I am using right now(bCombat) makes the ai utilize cover a lot more and it also utilizes suppressing techniques combined with flanking.

Just last night when I was sniping a squad I had taken them out. I saw one unit, but lost them in the tress some 350-400 meters ahead of me. After lying in some bushes for awhile waiting to see if anyone would return to the spot, I heard footsteps closing quickly. I turned in time to see the squad had completely flanked me and rushed me hard and killed me before I could even get a shot off at any of them.

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

For anyone interested, what I said earlier about switching files over to make the DUWS(Dynamic Universal War System) work with my Vietnam packs, I am not doing that. What I am doing is creating my own scenario/campaign using the editor.

I have never made a mission before, but I have spent nearly every single night reading about scripts and everything else to try and make this more than some generic scenario that is kind of cool, but nothing special. I admit my idea is pretty ambitious for someone who had zero experience in mission making prior to this week, but the editor is not too complex and the scripts are not too crazy too remember and so far it has turned out quite nicely.

Right now I have the tutorial missions completed pretty much. It starts off with introducing you to the helicopter support mechanic in the game by having you call in transport for you and your squad. You then fly 2km to make a beach landing on an island just north of your military base. There you make your way on foot to the outskirts of a village nearly half a click away. Your mission is to search for an antenna in the village that the Vietcong are using to disrupt and intercept comms from the US. On the way to the outskirts I have a hint that pops up and warns you that you need to be aware, this scenario is designed to have every spawn be dynamic and ambushes are placed everywhere around the map that will always be a random chance.

That hint pops up in perfect video game fashion right around the time one of my dynamic ambushes would happen. The way I have my spawn system set up is I have AI placed all over the place. However, 99% of the ai will only have spawn chances, nearly nobody will be guaranteed to spawn in. So even when my buddy and I have ran through it a few times to check everything is working, we still never know where anyone is because it is so random. Sometimes a patrol will spawn, sometimes it won't. Sometimes the snipers spawn, sometimes they don't. So you can get really lucky and theoretically have it to where just about nobody ever spawned for you, but the chances of that actually happening are nearly impossible because I don't have the spawn chance that low.

Anyways, after making your way to the village outskirts, it opens up to where you must search through it, find the antenna, and destroy it. Once you do that, you are then required to make your way through the jungle to a radio tower that also is disrupting/intercepting comms. Again, this radio tower has a dynamic sniper spawn on it. One playthrough the sniper may be there ready to pick you off as you try to make your way up the hill, another playthrough it might be easy enough to just run up to it, plant your charge, and go.

Once you destroy it, it thens open up to where you make your way to the final village on the island, find the antenna there and destroy it as well. In good video game fashion I have this final village set up to be a little more difficult as it has a vehicle spawn in it. This vehicle spawn is guaranteed for the tutorial purposes to get the player aware of such a threat. Since these are the intro missions though, the AI skill is lowered. However, that does not stop the AI from taking you out still.

In fact, just last night when we did our latest test, I screwed up and had my squad on stealth mode still, so they fell far behind me. When we set off the charge to blow up the radio tower, it made the patrolling vehicle actually leave that last village and make its way down the road. Me being careless with the squad did not realize they were in the middle of the road making their way towards us. This lead to the vehicle catching them off guard and flat out mowing them down easily in the middle of the uncovered road. I was at least able to come up from behind and to the side to take out the gunner from his backside unprotected and then we were able to get driver, but this was not before all of the squad was killed except for me and my buddy.

Back to the mission, after you destroy the final antenna, this is triggered to spawn another task to move to the beach north of the village a 100m. I have it triggered to spawn a PBR(boat) there on the shore once you complete the task. That is currently where I am at.

There are a few other smaller islands around that I have yet to decide if I still want to continue this tutorial or not. The plan is that once the tutorial is over, this turns into an open world Vietnam war game in itself. That means that tasks will open up all over the map that you pick and choose to do. One might be as simple as taking over a tiny village. Another may be to eliminate the Vietcong forces advancing on a US base on the mainland. And once you complete these first set of missions around the world, I will trigger it to have the AI set up new bases to show that you control the area now. And this will introduce more tasks that will be given out by the new bases. You will also get rewards. Say you helped drive off the Vietcong from a US base on the mainland for one task. I will set it up to where this spawns a couple of jeeps for your squad to use to help move around the map. These jeeps will respawn as they are a reward. However, other things like the helicopter support back at the main base does not respawn. I am going to try and find a nice balance of what does and does not respawn. Jeeps will at the moment as the map is so big and they have no weapons. Something like helicopter support(transport or attack) is not set up to respawn because I want the player to pick and choose when to use it and know they need to be smart with it.

I know this is an ambitious task and I am more or less using Arma 3 to make my own open world Vietnam game, but like I said previously, this stuff is not too hard to learn and there are plenty of places all around the internet that have libraries set up for scripts and what not to help you move and move quickly through the editor. My only wish was that BIS already had a 3D editor in place. I know they have one on the roadmap. I might use the MCC Sandbox 4 editor to set up enemies, but I haven't decided. Doing so would require that to be downloaded for anyone to play the mission. But since this was always just planned for my buddy and I, it is still a strong possibility I do. But I will still release this on the Steam Workshop and possibly Armaholic.

Anyways, I hope some of you are interested in this project. I am very excited in working on it. It is a lot of fun to me and the dynamic aspect of it will keep it fresh every time I play it. Another thing I forgot to add was I also have it set up to where you do not respawn. Die and you need to load a save up. However, I do have it in place already where you can go back to base and spawn units to join your squad. At the moment I don't have it set up to have a cooldown, so you can have fun with it like I did yesterday and have a 72 man squad or more if you wish. I just stopped at 72 because it was ridiculous watching them try to maintain formation.

If anyone has any ideas for tasks, please share them. It's only me and my buddy trying to brainstorm ideas. I don't want this to just be go here, destroy this. I am also looking into things like guarding a convoy(and of course this will be dynamic, so it may get attacked or it may not and would be an easy task). I have ideas of stealing a helicopter the Vietcong took and repaired from a wreck. Rescue POW's. Transport informants back to base to protect.

Those are some ideas I have right now and won't be too hard to put in once I get rolling on the open world aspect here very soon. But this map is gigantic and I still need many ideas. So my ears are wide open to any suggestions with tasks or any ideas you have for this project. If anyone is interested, I could always record a video of me playing through parts of it to show off the certain tasks or features.

[aldon_47]

Re: ARMA III

Canes21, that sounds freaking awesome!! I am very new to Arma, still only making my way through the Survive campaign, but I am amazed by what people have been able to come up with for this game. Your mod is something that I am very interested in and am looking forward to playing. I also really like your decision to go with a Vietnam era setting, just not much out there in the video game world for that conflict and being the military history buff I am, its kind of disappointing. Cant wait to hear more!

[Phobia]

Re: ARMA III

I want this!!!!!


Sent from da lil phone.

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

Glad you guys are interested! @Aldon, yes, I love the Vietnam setting, but there isn't much out there for us to really play. The map, guns, models, everything that you will be playing with, is not mine. Others created this. I am not digging through the details to see if everything is 100% accurate, but it does seem pretty good, especially for an addon. I've downloaded a Huey pack to go along with the the basic Vietnam pack I downloaded, so there will be a good variety of helicopters to choose from.

I wish I had the talents and resources to have voice acting and much more, but this is just a side project for fun. I've seen other scenarios out there that people have added things like that and it's amazing what others can do. This will be purely text driven, just about all of it through the briefing and tasks. I am not putting a story behind either other than this is the Vietnam war and you are trying to eliminate the Vietcong. That's it.

A huge open map, tasks everywhere for you to do in your own order, and random spawns will create a dynamic world and each time somebody plays, it will be different from someone else's experience. I might do a simple convoy mission that goes as smooth as can be. You might do it and find yourself in an ambush. You never know how it's going to play out and that is what I find is the most important aspect of it all. The less predictable the AI can be, the better the experience.

Also, I can't seem to get ShadowPlay to work and record, and I do not want to try and use fraps, so right now recording won't be happening, but I do plan on taking pictures and I will edit this post(if needed to avoid double posting) with pictures.

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[Phobia]

Re: ARMA III

I've done mission creation and scripting in ARMA 3 before also. It can be very time consuming, so I know the amount of work that is required.

Do we have each other on steam? If not send me a damn friend request so we can start getting in some missions.

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

Just a little update. Nothing major. A Guerrilla force occupies an island. You can go there to receive tasks. In walking the line between pure ArmA realism and video game fun, I feel like fun needs to be a big deal. I'm not going to go crazy, but having things like this mission giver, or outposts scattered around to clear for fun are things I feel like should be included. Overall I just want this thing to be fun and pretty dynamic. After all, I am creating an open world while giving the player the choice to do what they want when they want.

Of course there are some limitations. Considering how difficult spawning in AI on triggers and giving them tasks, waypoints, etc. after they spawn in is, pretty much everything will be spawned in initially. My goal is to have tasks located to where they don't intersect one another. That way you aren't ruining the experience of another task by completing one. This also means this can cause strain on your computer. I've looked into caching the AI as that is more than likely going to be needed. I tried one option that I looked into, but it either didn't work or I was too dumb to set it up correctly. Right now the scenario is being created partially with a 3D editor call MCC 4. Since I am using it to help create this, that means it is required. Through the MCC 4 you are able to select units and cache them on the fly and set up the settings for it as well. In just testing that out myself, I set it to where every enemy on the map was cached. Before I cached it I had 35 FPS at the main base. Post caching I was sitting at 66. Pretty huge difference.

What this means is right now I am going to roll with it. Since the MCC4 is required anyways to play this scenario/mission/project..whatever you want to call it, I am going to just leave it the way it is right now and put in a notice that says you need to cache the AI manually through the MCC 4. It's very easy. The MCC4 is opened up on screen like you would change a gun or open your inventory with the scroll wheel. Through there you are able to cache all the enemy AI at the push of a button and you can customize the cache settings on the fly right there too. So it won't be too difficult.

Anyways, I figured I would share a few photos of these Guerrillas. Right now this is how they are set up, things may change. As I near the completion of this project I will release it once all tasks are completed. I may go back in and add more objects and characters that only serve to bring ambiance and immersion, but that is pretty low on the list right now. Getting the AI placed, tasks created, and functions working is all I am worried about right now. Having AI repairing jeeps around a base can wait.

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Here is the guy that will be giving you tasks. You simply walk up to him and are given the task.

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[Phobia]

Re: ARMA III

Canes, you know if I need to use Playwith Six to play this mission?

I subscribed to the content on steam but I don't believe it will automatically download the required addons like CBA or vietnam map.

[canes21]

Re: ARMA III

I don't use Playwith Six, I just download everything I need from armaholic. I have no experience with Playwith Six, so I don't know how that works or anything about it really.

[Phobia]

Re: ARMA III

I don't use Playwith Six, I just download everything I need from armaholic. I have no experience with Playwith Six, so I don't know how that works or anything about it really.

Damn you short changing yourself, I would for sure check it out and learn it. You will be very happy you did.

I should be able to test the mission this weekend.