Paper Tiger
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Posts posted by Paper Tiger
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Thanks for sharing that with us. I downloaded it before going to work this morning and quickly opened it in the editor. It's a MONSTER! I took so long to get to the preview that I wasn't able to sneak a peak. I'll try again tomorrow morning and take a look. If I use it for anything, I'll let you know about it.
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I got absolutely nothing done yesterday but I made up for it this morning. The entire time was spent playtesting 'Hill 142 part 1' and it's really shaping up to be a beauty. I changed the weather setting to clear and the sun rises on time and it gets brighter and brighter as the scenario wears on. The map also looks much better in clear weather so all-in-all, it's a change for the better. I have enhanced the map again, adding some important new terrain features and all new victory conditions to make the player fight for the village. It's not an easy situation to win at the moment and I haven't won yet but it should be solid by tomorrow night. It has two distinctly different AI plans and that should be enough for a campaign. I got some nice action screenshots this morning too but I'll have to prep them for uploading first.
I also started work on the new map for 'Hill 142 part 2'. It's a radical departure from the previous version and it should provide another completely different environment for a battle. It has the north west corner of 'Hill 142 part 1' as it's south east corner and expands into the valley. I hope to post some screenshots this weekend.
BTW, I sometimes get free periods at work when I have nothing to do except surf the internet so, no, I've got nothing better to do than hang around here and post about my campaign. It keeps me happy and I like to look at the pictures too.
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Okay, it's definitely a thick haze problem. I changed the mission parameters to 'Clear' and the sun rose just after 5am and it got progressively brighter and brighter. Problem solved
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Wow, that's good news. Why don't you go ahead and create that thread...
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The Louch:
I'll try and get something out to you after the weekend. I think it would be a good idea for someone else to tackle a couple of the missions before I go ahead and release it. You'll probably get 'Hill 142' and 'Passed off' if I get a second working AI plan for it finished this weekend. I'm VERY confident about the others that are finished. 'Ambush', 'Strong Stand' 'Murder in the Night', 'Buying the farm' and 'Heavy Metal' are all done and won't need playtesting 'cos I've played them every which ways that I can think of.
I'm hoping that I'll get 'Hill 142' finished before the weekend so that I'll be able to concentrate exclusively on the remaining Phase 2 and 3 battles over the next three weeks. 'Heavy Metal' is a phase 2 battle, so there's 2 more to go. I already have the maps for the two climactic battles, one for the Republican Guards at 'Saudara' and the Special Forces in "Hasrabit'. Then I can get this thing finished and out in the first week of March.
To save some time, I'm only going to playtest the 'normal' versions of each scenario. Because there are definitely consequences to losing some battles, there are a number of different versions of a few phase 1 battles and they will be more difficult than the normal version. If you beat the tougher version though, you'll be back on track again. You're through to the playoffs but your team is a bit more beat up than if you'd played the normal version.
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Well, who's going to say no to an offer like that? I'm sorry to hear that you've given the project up as I was looking forward to playing it. When somebody else does a scenario, the scenario is capable of surprising me. If I do it, I know what the AI has/hasn't and that makes it more exciting.
Please go ahead and post it CMMODS and see what other people can do with it. I think Webwing wanted to do a whole campaign on your map. I could definitely do something with it but I'd probably tweak it a LOT.
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It's definitely the strongest haze setting possible. Now I remember why I picked it, it's because you get that wonderful red glow in the sky with thick haze and I liked the look of it. I'm actually quite happy to reset it to clear skies if I can get the sun to rise again because the map looks at it's best with a clear sky. It will then fit in with my campaign's story line again, ie this misssion must be completed before the sun rises fully...
BTW guys, it's nothing to do with the month or anything. The scenario takes place on the morning on July 12th and it worked just fine until 1.06. The screenshots printed above were taken from the scenario editor by jumping through the different time periods present in the scenario and I recognised them all from my previous experience. Nothing else was changed. My big mistake reporting this was that I omitted to mention that it was thick haze. I just assumed and you know what that does...
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Mark, Yes, the skies are very hazy. I'm at work just now, the dental appointment took ages so no Shock Force for me until much later. I'll try changing the very hazy setting to clear later if I get a chance and post the result.
Now some of you can appreciate why I was a bit disappointed that this feature appears to be broken. It's a beautiful effect and it also changes the gameplay of the scenario. That's the effect I wanted. The map looks better in clear light anyway but it was hazy to fit in with the story in my campaign.
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One of the reasons I spend so much time browsing these forums is that, occassionally, I find some piece of information that's gold. Thanks for sharing that tip with us Drusus.
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Sorry, I wasn't clear, that was in response to thewood's post. I really like your idea and it would especially help with WEGO games. In RT, it's not such a problem.
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I get the feeling that 'Hill 142' is going to take a lot more work to get everything just right because I'm having to learn completely new tactics as a player. Today, I started using area fire and getting RPG units to target buildings and I was getting good results. Before 1.06, I rarely used area fire with Red units as they didn't really have the ammo to do this. Now they can and it adds so much more to the game. Red v Red MOUT wasn't a very satisfying experience before 1.06.
I'm really anxious to get this one finished a.s.a.p as I had an idea for a campaign last night that is very exciting and I can't wait to try it out. It will fit into my Syrian Civil War story quite well, the fighting in Damascus. Since the Marines module is probably still a few months off in the future, I'll do some real RedvRed MOUT in the next campaign.
The Hasrabit campaign will be structured like a season of American football. There will be the regular season games where you must play 6 games but there will be at least 14 different situations in Phase 1. Depending on your results in each game, you'll take a different path to the final phase 1 battle, of which there are several versions. Win that and you're through to the play-offs with your team, injuries and all, where a loss will dump you out of the campaign. Then, phase 3 will be the championships and the superbowl, at the moment, two very different battles.
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You can already program the AI to do this. 'Exit after' means they'll all move to their objectives, wait until that time and then move on to the next order.
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I still haven't had any time to start this one because I'm too busy working on something else but once it's finished, I can't wait to give it a go.
However, I do notice people posting "give us more time please" for certain situations and I often wonder why. Time pressure is a really good way for a scenario designer to up the excitement and difficulty of a situation, especially if you're playing as the US side. Two hours is a very long time to play one single scenario, especially if you have to playtest the monster 10-20 times first to get everything right.
But we all have our own tastes. I suppose Webwing could do two different versions of his campaign, one as it is with time pressure, and the other with each scenario two hours long for those who prefer it that way.
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Okay, I playtested the scenario a few times again this morning, this time starting at around 5.30am. There's plenty of light available then and it played just fine. However, it definitely didn't get any brighter. By 6am, the sun is very bright but I didn't see this.
Unfortunately, because I was playtesting and it was pretty intense, I forgot to get a save game before I quit but I should get one tomorrow morning for you Mark. (If my dental appointment permits) The scenario is 1hr 30mins long so I'm rarely playing it through to a conclusion. I'm still trying to find that 'sweet spot' for balancing the Blue-Red forces.
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Yup, that's what I figured too. If the set up zone is EXCLUSIVELY within a building then the AI units in that group have absolutely no choice but to set up in there. But, just now, when they have a choice, even a very small choice like in my above picture, they refuse to deploy in the buildings. I've repeated that experiment a few times and they NEVER once set up one unit in the buildings even with different settings 'mixed' 'upper floors' etc.
Now, I really haven't observed this behaviour before. But most of the scenarios I've designed so far are open terrain or it's the human player who's the defender in the MOUT situation. However, pre-1.03, one of my very early experiments had a couple of Stryker platoons attacking a small enemy held village and the AI definitely set up in the buildings and out of them. I was a complete newbie to the editor then and so I was using large, mixed terrain set up areas and the AI did a good job of mixing things up a bit and keeping it unpredictable for me.
Of course, it could be some problem that's unique to my system since so few people are actually seeing this happen, or at least noticing it.
By the way, I repeated my experiment this morning with some trenches and the AI always set up in the trenches so the problem seems to be limited to houses only.
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Ha! When I'm playing with two or more companies, I line them all up in parade ground fashion too.
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I think people would have reported seeing this earlier...
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hi Mark
I don't have a copy of that file anymore as I've already changed it. I've added new terrain and changed the OB etc so it's very different from the file above. To do it again, I'd have to change the time back (not hard to do) and playtest it again. I'm playtesting it again this morning starting at about 5.30am.
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Let's start with a quote from Martyr's earlier post...
-There does seem to be a problem. In some (possibly all) campaign missions, the red units are mis-placed from where they used to be. For instance, units that were once in trenches are now located on plain ground away from the trenches. Units that were once in buildings are now located behind or away from those buildings.-
Now I haven't tested trenches or pillboxes and I don't really have the time to do that thoroughly. I know that buildings and trenches were both modified in 1.06 to provide better cover. Then I can't get the AI to set up in buildings except in exceptional circumstances. If this isn't a new bug how come nobody's ever picked this one up before. I don't play much MOUT but I know that the rest of you DO so surely somebody would have noticed this before.
I know I've seen the AI set up in buildings before even when the buildings were partial tiles and the set up zone was quite large containing open ground and other buildings. I was playtesting that scenario of mine before 1.06 and the AI set up in buildings occassionally. Now it NEVER does unless forced to, ie no other option available to it. In my test, it appears that the AI actually AVOIDS buildings.
If it is a bug that WAS present before that scenario designers can no longer avoid because of a hack that Charles put in, how can I avoid this mistake so that I can deploy infantry in buildings again?
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I'm not sure if this is what does it, I'm not a Tech guy, but I when I see this happen the CPU is really struggling and the graphics quality drops down a few notches.
Looking at your picture there, there are quite a few burning wrecks and smoke and that can slow down your frames.
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Because I don't think either of the issues that affect this scenario will get fixed and released anytime soon (no AI set up in buildings and no sunrise) I'm going to have to re-script the story and move this battle to a later time. I playtested it a couple of times again this morning and it's WAY too tough for the player in the dark. In 1.05, with the same set up, I was able to blow through this one with minumal casualties but now I'm losing in excess of 60% of my force and still losing. I even KNOW where the AI is and what they have/haven't got and I'm still losing.
My last work this morning was to move the start time to 5.30 and reduce the Red forces somewhat but I didn't have time to do much more than test the first ten minutes. There seems to be enough light to play the situation at that time and who knows, maybe the bug only affects sunrise and not the jumps in light level afterwards.
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While everything plays better with 1.06 I think there is a new bug introduced with 1.06, namely that the AI will no longer set up units in buildings (and perhaps trenches but I haven't tried this yet) except when they are whole-tile buildings and their set up area is exclusively in-building. I posted an example with screenshots from the editor in another thread about this problem.
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Wouldn't the General Discussion Forum be a more appropriate place for a discussion like this? It's not a Shock Force related issue.
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Repeated the experiment, this time with different building settings. The above shots were done with 'Mixed'. The repeat was done with 'Roofs' for the single storied buildings. This time NOBODY set up in building D. No need to post more screenshots as I think you've all got the picture.
How come the sun don't rise anymore - possible bug?
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
There it is... beautiful...
So the sun rises when the weather is clear or light haze. But there's no sunrise with heavy haze. I haven't tried overcast yet.