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jedra

Enhanced Skills Slider

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If its the blue "set skill" menu then it goes away with a right click of the mouse like the action menu in general.

Great addon!

Thanks mate - I should play vanilla more often - sometimes I forget!!

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Only tested it briefly so far but love it so far! I can see this one become a must have (at least for me) so it would be nice to be able to define some stuff in a "userconfig\jed_ess\jed_ess_config.hpp" that would be applied automaticly on mission startup.

Thinking mostly about random with spread function where in the jed_ess_config.hpp you define what skills to randomly change and sets the min/max limits. Would be awesome if this could be defined per SIDE as well. Leading to unpredictability and "never the same" even if a mission is played several times in row.

Also agree regarding the action menu in the middle of screen, would be better if there was a less intrusive way to do it.

Maybe an option in the config file that removes it from the action menu (but can still be called from a radio trigger/script) since I think after experimenting and finding good settings the GUI won't be needed as much...

Anyway, looking forward to whatever you decide to release!

/KC

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@KeyCat - thanks for the suggestions. I will look at implementing a userconfig at the weekend - it sounds like a good idea. As for the trigger thing. By using an AddAction, I know I am not going to interfere with a mission or other addon. Using a radio trigger may cause problems if a mission loaded also uses it. I think you may have to live with it, or use the right mouse button as Alex72 suggested.

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Hello mate,

Side and Group functionality should be working. It is for me anyway ;-) It does not display slider values for Side/Group initially because it makes no sense to do so when each unit within a group or side will have different values. But certainly if you set a spread range or apply a percentage when a side / group are selected it does apply them to each unit in that group or side. Try it - set a spread range for a group and then check on an individual unit you know is in that group.

The perma-hint is because it is an addaction that is continually checking to see if the player is alive and an admin and it is generally first on the list. I guess because I play mostly with ACE I don't see it. I'll check if you can do something about this with the addaction command.

@Old Bear - thanks for the mirror - I'll update the first post.

Hmm, OK I will try it again tonight, but when I tried it last night it seemed to me that only the single-unit functionality was working. Using single-unit functionality I successfully reduced their skills to useless, I tried the side/group options, and got creamed :) and when setting the sliders to their minimum on Side/group, upon checking the units individually they seemed to have retained their original values.

---------- Post added at 17:01 ---------- Previous post was at 16:56 ----------

@KeyCat - thanks for the suggestions. I will look at implementing a userconfig at the weekend - it sounds like a good idea. As for the trigger thing. By using an AddAction, I know I am not going to interfere with a mission or other addon. Using a radio trigger may cause problems if a mission loaded also uses it. I think you may have to live with it, or use the right mouse button as Alex72 suggested.

I've seen some addons of a similar nature to this have the button on the esc. screen. So you press esc. and get the window that allows you to restart/abort etc, and the button goes there. It doesn't affect the flow of the game either.

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Are you playing SP, MP or LAN? The sliders should be setting the individual units when you choose All Units or a group. The only time it won't is if you do it too early and the units are still spawning. Also, if you could let me know what mission you're using and I can check if it's something mission specific.

Regarding the ESC feature - I will look into that as it may be preferable to an action menu item - thanks for the tip!

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Are you playing SP, MP or LAN? The sliders should be setting the individual units when you choose All Units or a group. The only time it won't is if you do it too early and the units are still spawning. Also, if you could let me know what mission you're using and I can check if it's something mission specific.

I will examine it more carefully tonight. There was no specific mission, just an editor test scenario on Utes, with me vs a group of 3 Opfor. Is the addon tested in the editor environment?

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I will examine it more carefully tonight. There was no specific mission, just an editor test scenario on Utes, with me vs a group of 3 Opfor. Is the addon tested in the editor environment?

Yes - that's how I built it. The video in my WIP thread was done in an Editor session. I also tested it in that scenario after I re-packed it yesterday. I will test it again though as you've hit my paranoia spot!!

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Cool thanks. I think you may be right about the skills not applying - something seems to be amiss. It's fine with my packed version, but not fine with a version I just downloaded. I'll do some more checking...

---------- Post added at 18:42 ---------- Previous post was at 17:37 ----------

All, I have no idea what happened but the the version that was up was incorrect. It's been one of those weeks I'm afraid :|

Anyway, you can re-download using the first download link in the first post as I have put the correct version on my server.

Again, apologies - just trying to do too much this week!

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Again, apologies - just trying to do too much this week!

Take your time Jedra, we will be here when it's done....

/KC

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Ive tested to change both sides skills using the "side" option and when i check them individually they all have changed skills. So its definatelly working for me. I did spawning groups as well and no probs.

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Cool - it works for me too now - lord knows what frame of mind I was in yesterday!

Just a note on timing...

If you are running this on one of the 'Big Missions' such as Evo, Warfare, Proman, MSO etc, then try to avoid setting skills right at the start. Two reasons;

1. Those missions are probably still spawning units for a good couple of minutes after mission start.

2. They are running a lot of set up scripts at the start.

This mod works by shunting a block of code over to the server (and clients) and running the unit updates remotely. If the server specifically is under heavy load then the scripts may get delayed (they will run, but slowly).

Most of these type of missions have a 'Hey, I'm done with setting up now' message of some sorts, so it's best to wait until then. In these types of missions, it's usually a while before you engage anyway, so it should not be too much of a problem.

This mod itself will not adversely affect performance (unless you Spam the Apply button!) but it can be affected by performance. You just need to take a breath and wait if the server is running slowly.

Also, remember the mod only changes skills to existing units, so once in a while you'll need to re-apply the skills to pick up newly spawned AI. If people find it useful, I could add something that allows the mod to run the last used set-up every few minutes (user specified) - which should pick up any new AI spawned since the last 'apply'.

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Also, remember the mod only changes skills to existing units, so once in a while you'll need to re-apply the skills to pick up newly spawned AI. If people find it useful, I could add something that allows the mod to run the last used set-up every few minutes (user specified) - which should pick up any new AI spawned since the last 'apply'.

Is it feasible to use a unit's init event handler?

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Is it feasible to use a unit's init event handler?

I didn't know there was an EH that fired when any unit was created? Because I am not creating the units, I would need to know when a new unit spawned so I could adjust it's skill. If you can't do this I could keep an array of 'known units' which I check regularly - but if I am doing that, I may as well just run the skills update regularly. It's relatively cheap to do this anyway in terms of performance. Having a EH running may not be - not sure! If the EH exists I would need to run some tests.

I'll have a think about it over the next couple of days.

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Supremely useful mod Jedra, thanks mate. :)

During your testing of the various skill settings/combinations possible with your addon, did you find an optimum setup that you would recommend, i.e. to obtain AI who are intelligent tactically but aren't also superhuman sharpshooters? In particular I'm interested in the best settings to use whilst also running ACE and ASR AI. Any suggestions appreciated. Cheers.

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I didn't know there was an EH that fired when any unit was created? Because I am not creating the units, I would need to know when a new unit spawned so I could adjust it's skill. If you can't do this I could keep an array of 'known units' which I check regularly - but if I am doing that, I may as well just run the skills update regularly. It's relatively cheap to do this anyway in terms of performance. Having a EH running may not be - not sure! If the EH exists I would need to run some tests.

I'll have a think about it over the next couple of days.

As you might already know the extremely useful Extended Event Handler functionality of CBA has a class called Extended_Init_EventHandlers, an excerpt from JTD Fire & Smoke config looks like this:

class Extended_Init_EventHandlers
{
// Define the classes to add inits to.

class All
{
	JTDFAS_Init_All="(_this select 0) addEventHandler [""killed"", {_this execVM ""JTD_FireAndSmoke\Scripts\FireAndSmoke.sqf""}];";
	JTDBIRD_Init_All="(_this select 0) addEventHandler [""fired"", {_this execVM ""JTD_FireAndSmoke\Scripts\BirdsTimer.sqf""}];";
};

class Man
{
	JTDBIRDS_Init_Man="_this execVM ""JTD_FireAndSmoke\Scripts\BirdsInit.sqf"";";
};

};

As you can see any unit created gets a couple of scripts run on it automatically (to add eventhandlers), and the Man class gets a specific script run on it, which sounds like what you might be interested in. The init event happens once per unit, upon creation, so it's not expensive to run.

Edited by DMarkwick

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@DMarkwick - I knew the CBA boys would have thought of it - I just had never thought of that angle! I will have a play with this over the weekend. Thanks for the heads up on this!

@Munger - The answer is 'it depends'! I haven't found a 'magic formula' yet. What I would say, is keep the 'General' higher than the Aiming stats. This seems to generally make them more intellegent whislt not making them sharp shooters. There are a few other factors to bear in mind also depending on the mission...

1. Other mods (such as ASR_AI and Zeus) play with the CfgAISkills config which affects how the actual values affect the way the engine interprets AI. So, using a value of say 7 on the sliders will actually cause the engine to use a different value depending on what is in CfgAISkills - check out the readme at the bottom of my first post for a better explanation. Having said that the effect is relative, so reducing or increasing the skill sliders will have the same relative result.

2. You have to also take into account any other 'scripted AI' they may be in play in a mission. Such as in Zeus, or UPSMON for example. Also people like Celery and Xeno get very creative in some of their missions!

3. Then of course their is BI's own AI routines running - but hopefully (and it certainly seems the case) these are affected by the skills-array which the sliders modify. When you turn down the 'general' setting, the AI group leader certainly seems less sure of himself. Also the AI teams still seem to try and outflank you, but seem less sure of what to do when they have flanked you when their general skills are lower. This could be placebo, but I don't think so.

As for what I use. I have found that by reducing all units or groups by a small percentage seems to work nicely without making the mission a totally different experience.

At the end of the day I think people are going to have to try it for themselves to get the settings that their particulr group likes. After all, this is exactly what people did with Enemy-Precision. Ask 10 people what their settings were for this and you would likely get ten different answers!

I would like feedback on this though as I want to make this addon useful.

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Jedra,

How can I get it to work in single player? My CBA is up to date and I have the Slider PBO in an add on folder. But when I load up my single player game I don't see any way to interact with it.

P.S. Two four year-olds, huh? Sounds like twins...same here!

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OK, new version seems to work for sides, groups and units :) nice one.

A minor bug, I can set any individual's settings to 0 and they will stick, but doing the same with sides & groups does not stick. But only for the 0 value. All other values seem to be OK.

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The zero thing is a bug I think - the aim was never to let you set it to 0 as the AI never recover from this - i.e when you set it to zero, even if you then set it to 1.0 they stay dumb! It's like 0 switches them off!! I'll take a look.

@Biggie. It should appear in your action menu? You also need to remember to select the button to the left of each slider to turn each one on. Oh, and yup it's twin girls - they are the cause of the bags under my eyes!

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Jedra,

How can I get it to work in single player? My CBA is up to date and I have the Slider PBO in an add on folder. But when I load up my single player game I don't see any way to interact with it.

For me it shows up automatically in the middle of the screen at start of SP missions. Maybe some addon is blocking its auto popup? In that case try scrolling your middle mouse to bring the action menu up (or however you bring it up when you play) like Jedra mentioned.

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Hi,

I have noticed that certain addons cause the addaction not to work (Loki's Lost Key being one of them). I'll take a look while I am bug fixing at the weekend. Until I can fix this, try running without addons and then adding them one at a time and see which one is the culprit - then let me know ;-)

Also, a quick update....

I have a working version that now reads a set of basic settings from a userconfig file and also causes each newly spawned unit to take on these values. To do this it now needs a component sitting Server side (as it needs to run from the config as a pre-init). However, when I sat back and thought about it, it's doing pretty much what Robalo's ASR_AI does (only he does more stuff and does it better). I really would like this addon to complement ASR_AI and not become incompatible with it. From a selfish point of view this is because I use ASR_AI and from a non-selfish point of view, so do a lot of other people!

Having said this, I have also mostly implemented a feature that allows any changes made by the sliders to be applied persistently (i.e any new units created take on the last change made by the sliders). There are some hurdles to overcome (i.e currently it only works on units created on the server). I can see some use in continuing with this, but I am going to have to be careful that this feature also does not affect ASR_AI.

My initial desire was to create something, that should you be in a mission and you're having your arse kicked and everyone was having a miserable time, you could do something about it without having to restart the mission or restart the server with different params. I am in two minds wether I should stray too far from this. Anyway for various reasons, my weekend starts tomorrow and with the weekend comes clearer thought! Anyway, I had better get back to sorting out the mess of a Coldfusion site I just agreed to take on support for or my weekend won't start until Sunday!

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Sounds great with persistent skill man!

Something i didnt test which i will do today is if snipers work more realistic by lowering their reload and spotting speed skills, but raise aim skill and spotting distance. I noticed lately the snipers empty their mags like there is no tomorrow acting completelly the opposite of how a sniper should - aim carefully and take the bastards out, and not go assault style. :D Hopefully your superb addon can counter that behaviour a bit.

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Sounds great with persistent skill man!

Something i didnt test which i will do today is if snipers work more realistic by lowering their reload and spotting speed skills, but raise aim skill and spotting distance. I noticed lately the snipers empty their mags like there is no tomorrow acting completelly the opposite of how a sniper should - aim carefully and take the bastards out, and not go assault style. :D Hopefully your superb addon can counter that behaviour a bit.

Hopefully yes! As long as whatever FSM BIS uses for this takes acount of the skills array then it should. Snipers do act a bit strangely - they are not exactly sitting around for hours waiting for the perfect shot, but more like frustrated Rambo's yearning for CQB!!!

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