[SP] Lost v 4.0 - Like a mash-up of 'Dogs of War' and 'Manhattan' (without the bugs)!

[markb50k]

If its consistently 5 seconds I would think you could diagnose it.

I do a check for the war status every 60 seconds so it's probably not that Could be the check intel script. Look in pulse.sqf and that should show you all the cyclical checks.

Since you are running your own version you could remove the version check which may run every 5 seconds since its worthless to you? Just some ideas

Sorry but I don't notice any consistent hiccup like you describe

[Rydygier]

Thanks, already adjusted all these pulse loops, some disabled (these first-time missions). I guess, only with weak CPU these cyclical lags are present. This must be something with called code, as spawned or execVM-ed code will rather suffer delays, than causing any lags, so for these loops replaced call with spawn and added some sleeps. Two possibities: 1. I missed some loop; 2. This is not because of loop, but maybe caused some another way (???) cyclical CPU overload. Noticeable is, that this is not present in older version... Well, I'll investigate this further.

PS. I must admit, that this is first and for now the only mission, I liked so much, that I wanted to do such adjustments for future usage. I even have somewhere on my HDD very early, unfinished version of quite similar SP dynamic, that I made before I learned about Lost. It shows how close is the Lost mission to my tastes.

[kiberkiller]

Nice mission markb50k!! Overall i cant really complain but i have some suggestion to make it better.

1. I dont really like the search houses and get random enemy spawned concept, maybe because it's not really tactical to me. How about raiding guard posts, enemy patrols, road blocks, armory, camps and etc to find items instead of searching houses. This way you can recon the area and plan your attack properly.

2. Recruiting volunteers can be done by raising the town affinity toward you, after the town have increase to certain point then you get recruits from there.

3. Units experience - I'm not sure if it's possible but it would be great if after certain numbers of kills your units will level up/ have better stats. Gives you more incentive to bring them to battle and let them do the killing.

4. Gain skill - Maybe adding random mission where you can learn skills like lockpick or repair added to you.

5. Enemy air - Once i manage to find a M1 tank and i saw there's enemy hind in the air, after i shoot it down i notice it keep coming every 5-10min even after i shot like 4 of them =( . I dont think the enemy can send that many reinforcement at 1 time.

6. Military Vehicles - I dont like the idea of finding random empty tanks on the map, how about you find it on deserted military camps or captured by the enemy. this way, you need to raid the enemy camps to get better vehicles or ambush enemy patrols and repair it.

I'd like to have all of these things as well. Particularity changing separate houses into single Town entity, Warfare style.

To be honest, I stopped playing Apocalypse and went back to playing Lost.
Apocalypse doesn't really have any structure or that same sense of progression as Lost does and it gets dull after a while.

[markb50k]

Nice mission markb50k!! Overall i cant really complain but i have some suggestion to make it better.

1. I dont really like the search houses and get random enemy spawned concept, maybe because it's not really tactical to me. How about raiding guard posts, enemy patrols, road blocks, armory, camps and etc to find items instead of searching houses. This way you can recon the area and plan your attack properly.
2. Recruiting volunteers can be done by raising the town affinity toward you, after the town have increase to certain point then you get recruits from there.
3. Units experience - I'm not sure if it's possible but it would be great if after certain numbers of kills your units will level up/ have better stats. Gives you more incentive to bring them to battle and let them do the killing.
4. Gain skill - Maybe adding random mission where you can learn skills like lockpick or repair added to you.
5. Enemy air - Once i manage to find a M1 tank and i saw there's enemy hind in the air, after i shoot it down i notice it keep coming every 5-10min even after i shot like 4 of them =( . I dont think the enemy can send that many reinforcement at 1 time.
6. Military Vehicles - I dont like the idea of finding random empty tanks on the map, how about you find it on deserted military camps or captured by the enemy. this way, you need to raid the enemy camps to get better vehicles or ambush enemy patrols and repair it.
overall it's a great mission, thanks for a job well done =D

1. a lot of that is already set up, i.e. enemy patrols, camps, weapons caches, are already in the mission and you can search those for loot. you dont even really need to search houses. you have choices.
2. your method, which was actually an older method i used to use, ended up being too repetitive. so i changed it. now you can raise affinity and when you do youll know where the resistance fighters are OR just search the houses until you find them. Again, choices. And in this case, i prefer the way i have it now.
3. Its possible. Something to consider. The old versions of LOST actually had running scripts for each unit that raised their skill as they did things. It ended up being something i hardly noticed, but cost significant CPU processing. Arma 2 gets too busy with so many scripts running at the same time.
4. Also possible.
5. The enemy can do that, and will. But it will run out. They only have a limited number of air assets.
6. You can find vehicles at deserted camps or capture from the enemy. You can ALSO just run across an empty vehicle. Again, its choices I give and variety.

Overall, I appreciate the feedback. It seems that overall you want a more RPG aspect of the mission, which I will admit, I have tried to add to it, but obviously you could continue to add more RPG features forever.

At this point, i dont see me adding much more to LOST as I am concentrating on APOCALYPSE.

I saw mention that someone went back to LOST after playing APOC, I say thats great! I'm glad that I can give people choices for the style they play. I guess that's what i make missions for.

Also, Realize that you can make APOC play like LOST by just having the enemy far outnumber your side. Thus you end up fighting a guerilla style war. Just a suggestion...

[Snake_61]

Still like playing "LOST" a lot...but I'm having problems!
Updated to Ver.5.7 and it still takes very long to search Houses.No matter if Chernorus-Map or Podagorsk-Map.
I'm on first day afternoon 5p.m. in Podagorsk and gained 26%victory, I think after so much battle the CPU-load could be high?

Standing near a door of a house, takes very long to get option for "search"...then after clicking on search still very much time to get any result!
But if I switch to map then back, it happens that "searchcommand" instantly appears or the search shows any results!?
This is not always the case...


Don't think the CPU is the bottleneck, it's a i7-920 @4GHz...
Oh yes...another strange thing happened: started Mission with Ver.5.4 then updated to 5.7 manually.
But last time I played I got a message (ingame) that it updated automaticly to Vers. 5.5 !

Again,great Mission and big challenge...but Housesearching is slowing down so it's becoming almost unplayable.
Any clues or help are realy welcomed.

[markb50k]

the message about updating to 5.5 is fine. code-wise, i didnt have to do anything special to go to 5.7 so the updater code doesnt show it. those messages are only for updates that that i have to do some code to change your save game.

unfortunately i'd have to do a complete rewrite of LOST to long-term improve the performance of the search houses, by moving all the scripts to FSMs. Dont know if i am up for that.

[Snake_61]

Thank You Mark, as always You take care of Your "people"
Glod to know now about this "problem" and knowing it's not my machine, which causes trouble!
Take Your time, I know Your in that Apocalypse-stuff involved these days.

[Fishshrike]

Love to play Lost, but was wondering whether it is possible to play as some of the OPFOR factions?

[markb50k]

sorry, but the short answer is no. the effort to add in the ability for the mission to allow for any combination of allied and enemy sides and factions was a major part of my decision to start the Apocalypse mission concept. I had to rebuild it from the ground up to do so, and I dont think it would be doable to LOST without a major modification.

If someone wanted to take up that effort, I'd be grateful.

[Fishshrike]

Okay- I'll tinker around and let you know if I get anywhere.