Small group play

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  2. 8 years ago

    If you're playing on a dedicated server, I'd say anywhere upwards of 120 would be ok (thanks for that advice, Spyder).

    Though if you do want to lower the objectives, go into the mil/civ obj modules and filter them in the filter drop downs (ignore small objectives, ignore small and medium size objectives, etc).

  3. Viktor,

    I don't believe you can change anything once the mission has started and you are playing (please correct me if I'm wrong guys).

    You have to adjust that in the editor.

    That's where heroe's instructions come in. There is a filter on Military and Civilian objective placement modules. One filter for objective size, and one for objective priority. Play around with them and run the mission with the placement module debug set to "On" so you can see them.

    Good advice I was given was to open a blank version of the map you want. Drop in a military and civilian objective placement module (Don't confuse civilian objective placement with the "Civilian Placement" module. "Civilian Placement" controls actual civilians. The military one controls military units) Change them both from "Place Units" to "Objective Only". Then place a player down and run the mission. It will highlight all of the objectives with their priority and size. Then adjust the filters from there.

  4. Thanks guys! :)

  5. Edited 8 years ago by Woody05

    Any time Viktor.

    Ok so here's the mission in its current state if anyone wants to take a look/give tips.

    The zip has the mission folder to so it can be added to the editor, and the .pbo

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/5r9x0oecvwdh1y4/Bornholm%20Ace.zip?dl=0

    Mods needed
    CBA
    Alive
    ACE3
    Bornholm

    I tend to add in RHS, 3CB Weapons, and ASR AI for flavor.

    If you really want to have some fun make sure you have ASR AI loaded, head to the city north west of the start airfield. Get past the industrial area to the main city with the apartments. Try to clear the city. Good luck lol!

    Still no briefings or anything. Again my first arma 3 mission ever.

  6. Slow day at the office here and I caught this thread as well after reading/watching the tutorials much like Woody05 did...I appreciate you all contributing and offering insights. A friend of mine and myself are also trying to design ALIVE scenarios that play out on much smaller scales and there's a lot of good stuff for me to review here. Going to do some testing tonight, I will relay what I have encountered.

  7. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    @singularity80

    One thing that I'm discovering here lately is to take your vision and stick to it.

    Initially when I started developing the stuff I've been working on, I envisioned them as sort of a slow burn; missions where I'd patrol and maybe I'd find some action, maybe I wouldn't. As I started reading and learning and picking people's brains, I started adding more and more forces (because that's how most missions are built) until things more or less resembled a COD mission. Not what I'm looking for!

    Now don't get me wrong, this is still a video game about killing stuff so I will still have more enemies than typical real life patrol missions (certainly a shit ton more), but I've been pruning a lot in the last few days/weeks and I'm having that sense of wandering and discovery again. Still by no means perfect, but more more in-line with my original goal.

    I also was beginning to make this stuff for SP-CO16 which is nuts (for me) in hindsight. I generally play alone with AI so am now shooting for a SP-CO8 experience.

    I typically make Assymetic Insurgency missions. This means OPFOR (the Assymetric side) will recruit forces from the civilian population; meaning the force strength they start with can dramatically increase/decrease depending on how well me and my BLUFOR mates do our job. This is a great concept and only possible thanks to the power of ALiVE.

    I've been finding balancing the missions for total units on the map has been easily the hardest part of all of this so figured I'd share that. It's been a constant struggle of asking myself how many enemies I want to have per square foot so things don't get too boring and how many friendly units I want on my side to assist me when I do that. Some maps my team is part of a much larger force and with tons of action; on others, I literally use no BLUFOR AI Commander at all so it's just my squad against the world. With different missions I'm tinkering with different things.

    For instance, try messing with limiting objectives a bit within the mil/civ placement modules and then go in game and watch how that impacts unit placement on the map. It's really pretty fascinating and these little decisions change the feel of a mission big time. In some missions I use "Do Not Filter" so the entire map is peppered with friendly and enemy forces. In others, I limit BLUFOR to only large objectives so they can handle the large urban areas and my small squad can handle the small towns and villages.

    Lots of ways to go about it but there's lots of helpful people to help you here too if you have any questions. Good luck with your mission(s)!

  8. @HeroesandvillainsOS 

    Thanks for the comments and they are certainly taken to mind as we start our design work tonight. We are starting with small iterative objectives - they will be very COD-like missions at first, but, as you pointed out, that was nearly my exact same thought...I want to see how ALiVE puts these units into action and how me and my friend or a couple others might have to respond to them. We also use TADST on our server so I took to notice when you mentioned that in first talking to @Woody05

    I have a lot of hope in using ALiVE as it seems to be quite powerful - off to go test now! Thanks again.

  9. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    Have fun with your friends!

    Yes I use TADST and have been having issues. I'm assuming this is a result of ALiVE needing an update, but I'd be curious to see how TASDT ends up working for you.

    With 100% certainty, you cannot use TADST itself to edit difficulty. That is broken with the 1.58 update. I hear it's still possible to edit that manually but I have no clue how.

    Barring that one issue, everything should be ok from what I gather aside from two server instances showing up in your server list (I have no idea if that's a problem or not TBH or if TADST is the only server type effected). Definitely intrigued if persistence (if you use it) works for you and doubly more interested if it works with TADST after ALiVE fixes it on their end. If not, I'll need to find another alternative server tool.

  10. Hey @HeroesandvillainsOS it sounds like you play pretty much the same way I do, mostly single player insurgency style missions. I tend to play straight out of the editor and never really messed with persistence, although that's something I really want to try, especially now I have a mate here at work who's keen to try it all out.

    This may seem like a really dumb question but do you run the server on your local machine, on another machine in your network or do you rent a dedicated server?

    I've been mucking around with ALiVE on and off for about a year now, never really all that seriously, but I think I've learnt a lot more from this thread so far than I have any other. So thanks to all who have contributed so far.

  11. I run with TADST on my local machine but after the ALiVE and BIS update, not gonna lie; I'm having issues with persistence and custom difficultly (default difficultly plays fine). I plan on investigating this after ALiVE fixes persistence on their end and then if it gives me problem, I'll (gulp...) try to learn how to use the built in server tools that came with the game ( :( ).

    Here's a link that should help you get the server part set up: https://forums.bistudio.com/topic/187954-alive-advanced-light-infantry-virtual-environment-10-ga/page-16#entry3005833

    Try it and let me know if it works for you! Very curious! The War Room instructions on ALiVE's War Room page are very straight toward so that combined with this should get you up and running.

  12. Thanks dude, I'll give it a shot over the weekend and let you know how I get on.

  13. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    @JD_Wang

    Olonson just sent me this code which helps you count total units on the battle field. This has been helping me with trying to balance (for my missions) that after 20 or so minutes, BLUFOR and OPFOR have relatively similar numbers (not saying you need similar numbers, just saying I'm trying that myself to see if it balances things well). Enter this in your debug in the pause menu then click local exec:

    _countopfor = 0;    {     if(side _x == east) then {      _countopfor = _countopfor + 1;     }    } forEach allUnits; 
    _countciv = 0;    {     if(side _x == civilian) then {      _countciv = _countciv + 1;     }    } forEach allUnits; 
    _countblu = 0;    {     if(side _x == west) then {      _countblu = _countblu + 1;     }    } forEach allUnits; 
    _countind = 0;    {     if(side _x == guer) then {      _countind = _countind + 1;     }    } forEach allUnits; 
     hint format ["Opfor: %1 | Blufor: %2 | Indie: %3 | Civ: %4", _countopfor, _countblu, _countind, _countciv];
  14. Note that the code only counts units that are spawned in.

  15. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    @SpyderBlack723

    Right yes. I've been teleporting around and clicking local exec, teleport again, rinse and repeat.

    Can any variation of this code count total units that includes virtualized units? Or probably better to just put the active limiter to like a huge number while testing instead?

    A way to get an active representation of the mission in real time would be very helpful, even if something better than this code exists within or without ALiVE if you have any ideas.

  16. If you're doing this on Takistan I'd be interested in seeing the final numbers you come up with for an insurgency mission. I only just realised that by setting both Opfor and Blufor to 400 I've been over saturating the battlefield and basically ruining the chance for the insurgents to do their thing.

  17. @JD_Wang If you're doing this on Takistan I'd be interested in seeing the final numbers you come up with for an insurgency mission. I only just realised that by setting both Opfor and Blufor to 400 I've been over saturating the battlefield and basically ruining the chance for the insurgents to do their thing.

    Yeah sure. Working on one now actually. It's definitely much less than that (I'm guessing 130ish on each side give or take which I think is still too much) and probably even more less here soon. It's tough to factor in how quickly OPFOR will grow as they recruit the civilians but this code will finally help me get an idea on that. At least a little better than not having it at all. :)

  18. @HeroesandvillainsOS  @SpyderBlack723

    Right yes. I've been teleporting around and clicking local exec, teleport again, rinse and repeat.

    Can any variation of this code count total units that includes virtualized units? Or probably better to just put the active limiter to like a huge number while testing instead?

    A way to get an active representation of the mission in real time would be very helpful, even if something better than this code exists within or without ALiVE if you have any ideas.

    Yes, there is a way to get the number of profiles in the mission, I can write something quick tomorrow.

    I'm working on a (secret) tool that won't be solely for debugging, but will include some debugging tools that would help debug missions in more advanced and user-friendly ways.

  19. Edited 8 years ago by HeroesandvillainsOS

    @SpyderBlack723 Yes, there is a way to get the number of profiles in the mission, I can write something quick tomorrow.

    I'm working on a (secret) tool that won't be solely for debugging, but will include some debugging tools that would help debug missions in more advanced and user-friendly ways.

    Thanks. I can't wait!

    Hey you're bad at keeping secrets. That'll be our little secret...

    Which you'll tell everyone. :)

  20. //by SpyderBlack723
    private ["_west", "_east", "_indep", "_inactiveProfilesBySide"];
    _west = 0;
    _east = 0;
    _indep = 0;
    
    	// count spawned units
    
    	{
    		switch (side _x) do {
    			case EAST: {_east = _east + 1};
    			case WEST: {_west = _west + 1};
    			case INDEPENDENT: {_indep = _indep + 1};
    		};
    	} foreach allUnits; // use foreach so you only need to iterate through allUnits once
    
    	// count inactive profiles
    
    _inactiveProfilesBySide = ([ALiVE_profileHandler,"profilesInActiveBySide"] call ALIVE_fnc_hashGet) select 2;
    _east = _east + (count ((_inactiveProfilesBySide select 0) select 1));
    _west = _west + (count ((_inactiveProfilesBySide select 1) select 1));
    _indep = _indep + (count ((_inactiveProfilesBySide select 2) select 1));
    
    [_east,_west,_indep]
  21. Where does this code go? I tried it in the debug console and it has an error in expression.

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