Paper Tiger
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Posts posted by Paper Tiger
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Okay, we're nearly there. Breakout really didn't need much work and today, I finished with Guards Counterattack and The Barrier today and they're both fine. I'm not going to change Hill 142 in any way so that just leaves me the two Saudara missions to update. That should happen tomorrow and then I can recompile the whole thing and hopefully have it back up on CMMODS by Friday. I'll also post a list of the changes that I can remember...
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Are you sure it's crashing and not just taking a VERY long time to get things sorted? I have seen this happen too with a large mission that was fine prior to V1.1 but I managed to get it to work. Here's what I did...
First, in the briefing screen just hit the 'Enter' key and that should get you to the scenario. You can always read the briefing later. Then, if the cursor is still very sluggish, just give it a little time and see what happens. Try to position it over that red button and press it to start the mission.
I admit that it does look like the game crashed but 2-3 minutes into the mission, everything runs very smoothly.
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Sorry, but what's the point of asking this? While TacAI and pathfinding has improved tremendously in the last year, who can tell you if they've improved enough for YOU to be satisfied? You should just wait until they release the v1.10 patch or wait for a new demo and decide for yourself.
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Since I got the Marines module installed properly, I have been working exclusively on the Hasrabit missions to work in some of the new artillery rules. I'm not hugely convinced that it's going to play an important role in this campaign but, since the reason I removed it from CMMODS was to get AI artillery into it, I am going to have to seriously rework some missions to enable the AI to use it's artillery. It's going to go into all the Special Forces missions except the finale, Hasrabit. I don't expect the Republican Guard missions to require much work though. The only two I need to do some real work on are The Barrier and Saudara Part 2.
Fortunately, now that I have established that ONLY the FO can call in artillery during the game, I have a pretty good idea how to go about introducing artillery used in missions potentially. However, at this point in time, I can't guarantee you that you'll see the AI use it effectively in the new version.
BTW, I started playtesting Breakout again yesterday evening. Wow! I'd forgotten what a GOOD battle that was.
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I decided to create a simple map and mission to test the AI's ability to use artillery dynamically throughout a mission. It is essentially a 1km long strip of table flat desert terrain with a small hill at the north end. On that hill is a 'normal' FO unit (regular experience and normal motivation) and at the other end, a Militia company for Blue. there are no pre-planned strikes and the Red player has two modules of 82mm mortars.
The first experiment revealed that after about 15 minutes of painfully boring walking across the board, I did see some spotting rounds coming in. After another couple of minutes they fired for effect but on empty ground as my trooops had continued walking throughout the mission. So the AI won't 'correct' it's fire if it's target keeps moving. Fair enough.
Then I expanded the mission slightly and gave Red a Recon platoon and added a couple of F-15 Ground support aircraft. After about 14 minutes I heard the aircraft come in but nothing happened. Hmmm. The artillery did it's usual trick of firing on long vacated positions.
I decided to repeat the experiment to see if the AI could call in artillery without the FO having LoS to any part of the board but with the Recon platoon in their same positions. there was no AI artillery at all in this mission so I guess that settles the issue about who calls in the artillery. Once again, I heard the aircraft noises but nothing happened.
So, for my final experiment, I moved the FO back to his regular position, gave him Elite status and bumped the Recon company commander up to Crack level, added some F-16s and finally, some Kiowa light helos to the mix and sat back. The results this time were spectacular. Since the aircraft noises were different this time around I think the F-16s put down some heavy strikes pinning down my boys and then the AI artillery took out the rest. I heard the F-15s but they still seemed to do nothing.
So what do I believe I have discovered?
a Only a Syrian FO unit can call in artillery. His mere presence on the map is meaningless unless he has LoS to the enemy.
b Once he has committed to a strike, he can't adjust it.
c That means that as long as you keep advancing, the AI artillery will just hit the empty ground behind you.
d F-15s don't seem to do anything except overfly the battlezone. Otherwise aircraft are just fine. The trouble is that there are, as yet, no realistic rules for handling Red air power.
Obviously, these are not thorough tests so my comments on the effectiveness of the F-15s need a lot more testing to verify them. However, that concludes my results for this morning. I haven't done any tests to see how the AI handles it's artillery or airstrikes against enemy armour when it is present in the game. That's for later.
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If you google the western seaboard of Syria, you'll find large swathes of VERY densely forested terrain. I have quite a few pictures of this terrain that I've been using for making my current series of maps. If you're creating missions in the desert where most of the fighting would probably take place, who needs them?
BTW, I often use thousands of trees in my scenarios and they run fine.
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I've spent pretty much the whole afternoon today working on a single mission trying to set up an opening artillery barrage and I'm getting horribly inconsistent results. Some of the time the artillery comes in quite quickly, within the first minute or so but otherwise it's taking nearly five minutes for it to start up. I've been testing this while I've been typing this and seen that the artillery spotting rounds start coming in after about a minute and a half and continue sporadically for the next 3-4 minutes. Nearly 6-7 minutes after the scenario has started and there's still no artillery barrage?
I have already set up the artillery in Ambush and Strong Stand just the way I want it and also the first two variations of The Farm mission and they're perfect. But I'm getting wildly different results with the mission that has the extra artillery. The enemy is set up in exactly the same place so there's no difference in the LOS at the start of the game. I have tried correcting the artillery to compensate for this and then it starts coming in within a minute. I have no idea as yet what's going on.
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There are three levels of AI in CMx2; strategic, operational and tactical.
Strategic is the AI plan created by the scenario designer and it tells the AI where to go and how to do it through setting stance, length of time to perform the order etc, that are all explained thoroughly on p133-137 of the manual so there's no need to repeat it all here.
The second, mid level AI, as I understand it, basically just organises the movement and placement of units within a group as it carries out it's order. For example, if your group consists of vehicles and infantry, this is the AI that governs how the individual units within the group move. And also where that tank goes when it reaches it's new objective zone etc.
The third and lowest level is the TAC AI. It decides what each individual unit does when it comes into contact with the enemy.
Now, in CMx1, I believe that the AI was programmed to move to the nearest enemy controlled VP location. This meant that if the AI was attacking one VP location and you sneaked a force around it's flank to seize one of it's VP locations, you would see the AI react to your move and send units to attack your new VP location. CMx2's AI can't do this at all. Instead, it will follow it's plan until it's finished. Just think of the computer plan as one huge WEGO turn plan and you'll get a better feel for what it can and can't do.
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Any chance of seeing some screenshots?
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Afraid not mate. The only real difference between WEGO and RT is that the human player can issue orders at any point in the game while the WEGO player has to wait a minute for the current turn to end before making his changes. The poor dumb AI is just the same for both players.
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Aw come on guys. Giving the player 2 hours plus to complete a mission that has been playtested and found to be doable within 50 minutes is just making it WAY too easy and 100% guarantees a win to the human player. Just enjoy the challenge.
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This morning I sat down to my first extended play session with the Marines module and I started out by playing a short compilation of the Special Forces missions from Hasrabit to see how much things had changed. I played my way happily through Ambush and Strong Stand and in the latter mission, I noticed that the Green troops were not quite so trigger happy. Perhaps friendly fire has been toned down a bit in the new module? I actually had a blast playing Strong Stand this time. And then I got to The Farm mission. At this point I was already content with what I was seeing, i.e. that the Hasrabit missions are slightly easier to win with 1.10. I noticed that the AI artillery was using air bursts so I took some unnecessary casualties in a couple of missions because I had set up too close to their area of effect. Cool!:cool:
But of course, I didn't see any dynamic AI artillery in any of these missions. Why? Because prior to v1.10 there was no point in giving the AI more artillery modules than it had support zones. So I decided to test out the version of the Farm mission you go to if you lose Hill 142. I started out by giving the AI some extra artillery so that there was a surplus and I also expanded one of the support zones to take advantage of the air bursts. Then I fired it up and waited... and waited. No opening barrage. What was going on?:confused:
Then after about one and a half minutes, I saw a spotting round. Weird! I still was a bit confused but after about 4-5 minutes the spotting rounds changed to Fire for Effect and the results were spectacular. But I hadn't seen anything like this in my first playtest earlier this morning. What had changed?
I hope somebody can confirm this for me to save me spending too much time experimenting but I think that any changes made to missions after V1.10 will see the AI handle it's opening artillery barrage in this way i.e. start with spotting rounds that zero in on their support zone and then FFE after 4-5 minutes. The versions I was playing before were all made with v1.08 and so the artillery barrage started in earnest after about 25 seconds just like usual. But missions edited or created using v1.10 will have this new artillery implementation.
I never actually saw any dynamic use of artillery by the AI in any mission today so I'm going to have to figure that one out. I DID set up a couple of SMOKE fire missions to see what that was like and it was brilliant. I am definitely going to work it into one or two of the new missions for the new version of Hasrabit. Just how long it will take to do this though, I'm not so sure. Because there is quite a long delay to the start of the opening barrage I was seeing Red units run into their own artillery barrage so I'm going to have to retime the attacks where necessary.
Anyway, I must confess that I'm HUGELY impressed by the new game. The Best just got better, and not just a bit better, more like 100% better. Congratulations to BFC and your beta testers on a spectacular job. Now that I've finally got it, I know that it was worth waiting for.
P.S.
If anybody can point me to a mission where I'll see the AI use it's artillery dynamically during he mission, I'd be grateful as I'd like to see it in action so that I know what to look for.
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Cool! Well done Pete. I'll be giving this one a run for it's money sometime soon.
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Same for me... It's all fine now... HURRAH!
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I just want to report that after reinstalling everything, it's working beautifully. I now have nine days of holiday left to get to grips with the new game (It's the end of Ramadan on Momday so Indonesia's closed). But for tonight, it's movie time with the wife. Thanks for the heads up to all you guys.
Cheers
PT
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You're joking!!! It was THAT simple a fix? I still have about 90 minutes or so to go before I finish the Gamersgate download so I'll just have to wait. If it all goes fine, I'll be certain to post about it.
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Here's hoping. It's a good job my wife was out shopping when I started having these problems as the emotional pyrotechnics were pretty impressive. She doesn't like to see me angry.
Anyways, if this solves the problem I'll be very glad that I exersized some restraint and desisted from posting anything 'unhelpful'
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Well, I'll be able to tell you what happens in about 3-4 hours... Gamersgate is SLOW today...
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Yup, your Red air power mod and a handful of others. I didn't try that before I deleted the entire thing from my hard drive. Oops...
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I reported everything I know in the Tech Support forum. I have a feeling that they're going to tell me that it was a bad install or something like that as I don't get the option to play Iron Man. What the solution to this problem might be? I have no idea.
However, I have made a backup of all my scenario files and have completely uninstalled the game from my hard drive (after unlicensing the Marines module). I will attempt a fresh install once the new download from gamersgate is complete and see if that helps although I'm not counting on it. Since I can't play the game at all, it can't hurt to try something radical.
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Hey, thanks for that. You just saved me $35 so my wife will be happy. I guess I'm off CMSF until they fix this problem.
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I purchased my copy of CMSF from Gamersgate last year and apart from a day or two's delay receiving the new patches, I haven't had any problems with the game until now. After the hugely frustrating wait for the module to arrive, you can imagine how disappointed I was to find that after installing it, the game became completely unplayable. I really can't see this problem getting fixed for a few days, and certainly not this weekend. that means that I'm forced NOT to play CMSF until this problem is fixed.
Now, since the vast majority of you all appear to be jumping with glee over the new game, I'm seriously considering uninstalling the whole thing from my hard drive and buying the game again directly from BFC but there's one more thing I need to do before resorting to this. I have Vista 64 Home Premium. If there are any of you out there who are runnng the mage fine with Vista 64, then please le me know. I'd be utterly pissed off if it's a Vista incompatability problem rather than a gamersgate problem.
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Totally unplayable. It crashes within the first 3 minutes of a scenario (any scenario, old or Marines) and I can't open the scenario editor at all. I guess I'll have to wait until 1.11 comes out before I can do anything at all with this game.
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New drivers installed... even worse. The game now crashes when I'm loading the mission up and it still crashes when I try to open the scenario editor.
NOT IMPRESSED!
Work in progress - The Road to Dimas
in CMSF Scenario and Mod Design Forum
Posted
Obviously I'm desperate to get back to work on this project and hopefully, I'll have Hasrabit completely updated by tomorrow evening and that will leave me the weekend free to work exclusively on these missions. Then I'll post some more screenshots.