[SP/Coop] This Is War 2014

Awesome stuff! Watching some ShackTac ARMA2 videos got me in the mood to break out DR again. Got me and my friend setup with this and we've had fun pushing to the East.

Couple of things:
A hilarious effect of the spawning system is when a building still under enemy control starts spewing a few fire teams out of nowhere. Clown Shacks, as we decided to call them. I suppose what could be done is making it so that if there are enemy units nearby, the spawns won't occur, and then maybe spawn at the nearest clear location and move to assist.

A distinct lack of enemy vehicle use, though. Aside from a few times some PLA tried to jump in a helo (mostly at the airport), and one time where a BMP was active, not many non-infantry threats. Doesn't stop EI from pushing hard sometimes, but with several armored vehicles for support it wasn't too much trouble to send them running.

Any issues running with UAI? I'm not certain if missions bake in things like that.

Sounds like you're already looking towards the future, so we'll be waiting!

I am aware of the problem with buildings spitting out pla echelons right before your eyes. Unfortunately there's no mechanism to detect the direction the player is looking in... with that I could solve the problem for sure. The reason that happens is because the smoke and mirrors I'm using to create close quarter combat requires me to spawn entities in fairly close proximity to the players. In a coop mission it becomes even more apparent because the reference point for all spawning in this mission is the fireteam leader and no other fireteam members are considered in the calculations.

Since I've loaded a couple of new functions into the EDX I've come up with somewhat of a solution, all be it not the most ideal. I've made a revision that checks a spawnpoints bearing from a player against the bearing of the players movement in 10m increments. If the player is moving towards a spawnpoint, has line of site (checked against terrain only) and is within a certain distance to the spawnpoint, it will not spawn fireteams. Granted, this solution only works if you're facing the direction you're moving so you may wind up catching some spawns or backing into some. Still, it seems to work pretty well to minimize the phenomena of 'clown shacks' (I like that by the way... I might make a mission called Clown Shacks ).

In any case, I've already updated and exported my mission files and I will post the update. I'm also going to post the mssn file so if anyone wants to try their hand at editing the file, feel free to do so. This IS my last revision of this mission.

I do appreciate the feedback though. I thought in testing that might become an issue so I should have addressed it then, but then again, I didn't have the functions written to handle it either. In any case, keep your eyes peeled for the update and thanks for supporting community work.

Cheers

Open world is how this game was meant to be played, sadly it's not up to the task sometime no matter how much you polish it. That's why missions like E2W and White Fang tend to be a better experience overall, though sometimes they seem to be so one-sided it's hard to advance (especially when friendly air units seem so inept at staying airborne for long and only the PLA AT gunners do their jobs), plus random progress-breaking crashes.

Does that bearing check only work if moving, or if simply oriented in that direction?

I had several crazy situations where me and a friend were providing fire support as the other two FT members and several other teams were moving on a location, but they were having a real tough time advancing to the location so the clowns were going nuts directly under our guns. I called down artillery and CAS multiple times in both situations. Ended up pulling back the second time when our Abrams and one of us got taken out. After a sudden and unexplained disaster with a Cobra, we grabbed an LAV and some newly deployed fireteams at another location and eventually captured several close locations from them.

Also, do you have any recommendations on what 1.02 compatible mods compliment this mission? I'm using an UAI version, but is an Entity limit mod needed or available?

Hello again. I know I promised an update long ago to address the "clown shack" issue, but as you might have guessed I was busy with RL and Long Road Home. As promised, I will be updating this though. Since I've finished Long Road I've been having some very pleasurable strolls around the island with TIW and have uncovered and fixed a couple of more issues in addition to honoring Dewi's request to make the lights go off in the day time and come back on at night. That said, I should be ready to roll out a version 2.81 some time fairly soon. Sorry it took so long for those that were waiting.

Cheers

Since I've finished Long Road I've been having some very pleasurable strolls around the island with TIW and have uncovered and fixed a couple of more issues in addition to honoring Dewi's request to make the lights go off in the day time and come back on at night.

Wow this is great work cant wait to reboot this classic mission, Fantastic work again

TIW - Still OFPDR GOLD

Thanks for the missions man. I've been out of gaming for a long time now, but had some spare time to kill today. Effing love DR still. I know I am hard to get a hold of, I apologize for all my unreturned skype messages (as it is usually logged on to my daughters iPad).

Thoroughly enjoying a romp via TIW28 now that my hotkeys seem to be working (same stuff but now works?)

Was there any additional "instructions" that came with this - understanding that a lot got lost in the SAR hosting period

Hi John. No additional instructions outside of what you find in the OP. Hope you enjoyed your romp!!

Cheers