Urban Conquest by tvig0r0us

[tvig0r0us]

URBAN CONQUEST v1.06 RC
by tvig0r0us




Time lapse video of zones changing hands. Compliments of Delta99. Thanks!! The new player spawn and unit selection system for 1.05

Instability has finally erupted into an all out battle for control of the city streets where all sides come ready to fight and scorched earth is a viable option. It's up to you to pull together a team and lead them to the ultimate victory... TOTAL ANNIHILATION OF THE ENEMY! With total freedom, how you approach your mission is entirely up to you. Take control of any vehicle, recruit soldiers or go it alone, there are no rules other than get it done. Urban Conquest is a fast paced, action packed urban engagement where the enemy could be lurking around any corner, so watch your back and stay frosty soldier.

Requirements:
- Arma II Operation Arrowhead
- British Armed Forces
- Private Military Company
- Army of the Czech Republic
- The urge for fast full on combat!!

Features:
- A cross between CTI and SCont
- Totally dynamic combat
- CQC oriented with house patrols
- Instant action
- Selectable soldier count, vehicle count, vehicle types, zone size, AI skill, fireteam size, starting time, weather, quick start option...
- Random respawn
- Random soldier type on respawn
- Totally independent AI
- Recruitable AI
- Drive any vehicle
- Portability
- Complete mulitplayer compatibility with up to 24 players
- Dynamic Environment

What do the markers on the map mean???
Blue = West CP - totally controlled by the west with no enemies in the area
Red = East CP - totally controlled by the east with no enemies in the area
Green = Resistance CP - totally controlled by the resistance with no enemies in the area
White = Neutral CP - controlled by no one with no troops of any kind in the area
Yellow = Contested CP - this means that there are multiple teams in the area fighting for control of the CP
Black dot in the middle of a zone indicates that the zone is able to spawn in troops.

Spawns only occur at control points that are controlled by the corresponding team and contain buildings that report room positions... if a CP is contested, no spawning will occur there until one of the teams takes control of the point. A winner is decided when a team reaches the set score limit, the time limit is reached (high scoring team wins) or only one team is left with zones on the map. If your team has no control points with valid spawn postitions when you die, you will be automatically switched to the remaining team with the least amount of control points and carry on the battle with that team. This does not necessarily mean your original team is completely out of the game. If there were troops alive from your original team they can still take control of a CP, but as for you, they are now your enemy.

To do list:
- Nothing else planned

Known Issues:
- If you get an enemy status from team killing when you have an ai squad you will not be the squad leader when respawned (just leave the group in this case)
- If players join each other's squads it causes locality issues when rejoining squads after respawn (use at your own risk)

v1.06 Changes:
- added persistent squads
- added each zone to task list
- added zone names
- added irregular marker size and shape
- removed depreciated CP size parameter
- changed scoring to directly emulate BF2 conquest style scoring
- fixed too much stuff to keep track of

v1.05 Changes:
- added respawn selection via map marker script
- changed zone mechanics to require presence in zone to maintain control
- added ai zone defenses to maintain zone control
- added vehicle commandeer action
- added action to join other human player groups
- converted most core scripts to fsm
- fixed and tweaked too many things to mention

v1.04 Changes:
- fixed civilian move script to prevent it from bogging down the engine
- fixed air vehicles from degrading when crewed and not in a controlled zone
- fixed player controlled ai markers not changing to mil dot when in a multi player game
- fixed defector marker not displaying when in multiplayer game
- small refinements in ai spawn and civ spawn room selection scripts

v1.03 Changes:
- added leave group action
- added full marker system(client side) with on/off option and option to display civilian markers
- changed civilians now group up
- added check for building damage... spawns will not occur in overly damaged buildings
- added check for zones with valid building spawns... spawns only occur in zones with buildings that report room positions ***indicated on map***
- fixed bug in vehicle recruiting where vehicle groups would grow unchecked until an entire side was in the vehicle group
- added complete scoring system based on kills, zone capture and defense with time or scorebased endgame. Fully selectable in params
- added battlefield size check to scale starting positions based on number of sides and size of battlefield
- added custom option for mission builders to insert any faction they choose not native to the game and select them via params menu
- all A2, OA, BAF and PMC factions included by default and selectable via params menu
- fixed an error in weather script that would override the weather condition with fog condition changes

v1.02 Changes:
- added planes at airports
- select 2 factions per side
- switch to enable or disable armored vehicles
- optimized network bandwidth usage a bit
- add selectable mission start time
- add selectable/randomized weather and fog conditions

v1.01 Changes:
- Fixed Recruit soldier action to work properly in MP game running on dedi server
- Added dismiss action for soldiers in player groups, works the same as recruiting
- Fixed problem in vehicle code that was forcing player's group to disembark
- Fixed vehicle recruiting of existing crew
- Optimized, or tried to optimize, all scripts to store fixed arrays at the start of the script so as not to pull on network resources on every loop
- Divided civs into groups similar to soldier recruit script to keep them from massing around the civilan group leader... as a side effect of this they behave much more as you would expect a civ caught in combat to behave
- Changed CP markers to reflect the size of the CP... colors remain the same


Urban Conquest version 1.05 available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?rz23odffnho0e6c

Version 1.06 Release Candidate 1 available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?pxi9rk55o1vk8xb

Version 1.06 Release Candidate 2 w/bases available here: http://www.mediafire.com/?n16np866y41gnl2


Creating your own UC missions:
Depbo the mission you wish to use as a starting point. Open the mission in the mission editor after you have placed the depboed mission in your MP missions folder. All missions contain all factions will notice troops and vehicles for each side placed around the respawn markers for each side. Any troop within 100m of the respawn markers will be included in the mission on the side that corresponds with the marker, so make sure not to put east troops near the west marker... You may, however, include vehciles from any faction at any of the markers and they will be used by the side indicated by the marker.

If you place troops from any addon near the markers, they will be included in the mission and are selectable by picking custom in the params menu under the first faction for each side. You can also play with any of the default factions mixed with your custom factions by picking any of them from the second faction for the side from the params menu.

To set up the zones, you will need to remove all of the existing zones from the map except for the one named "point". I prefer to set the first marker I place to the size I intend to run the cp's at, so if you want 100m zones, make the "point" marker 100x100 and go from there so you can see where your zones will be. Place the point marker wherever you wish to start building your mission. Select the marker and press ctrl+c to copy it. Then go through and paste it to all of the other positions that you want the battle to occur. Aside from the marker named "point" all of the other markers that represent cp's must adhere to the naming convention of "point_#" where # is a number between 1 and 100. The script will only initialize up to 101 points. So for example, your first cp is named "point", the rest are named "point_1", "point_2", "point_3" (without the quotes) and so on until you have placed all of the zones you wish to have in your mission.

Next you will notice open area locations logics. This is where ground vehicles are spawned. For vehicles to spawn in the mission, you must place the location logic inside of a cp that also has valid building positions to spawn soldiers. In other words, if you put a cp in the middle of nowhere with no buildings and then place a vehicle spawn there, nothing will spawn there. Keep this in mind when building your mission. The vehicle will spawn facing the direction of the location logic as well. Go through your mission area and place the logics in suitable places for ground vehicles to spawn.

You will also notice heli H objects. This is where helicopters will spawn. The same rules apply for the helicopters spawns as for the ground vehicles.

Lastly you will notice airport location logics. If there is an airfield in you mission area, you can include planes in your mission by placing these logics right near the runway or taxiway. Just as for vehicle and heli spawns, you must place the logics inside of a CP. It's good to know the direction of your runway so you can properly place them.

****New*****
New in the mission creation is the placement of the respawn points and starting player slots. The location of these units and markers on the map will dictate the location of the respawn selections in the map. I have also split the vehicles and units up for each faction so you can dictate under which category of vehicle scripts will be used for each. You'll notice new markers for each side (lv for light vehicles and hv for heavy vehicles... helo's and planes are self explainatory). Remember to keep these markers at least 200 meters apart on the map. Only the unit respawn markers will be keyed for the respawn script.

You will also notice civ markers around the map. These work in a similar fashion as the point markers. The first must be named "civ" and then "civ_1", "civ_2"... on from there. For each of these markers a civilian group will spawn and wonder around the buildings in a 200 meter radius from the mark. I did this to prevent civs from wondering around military installations and to insure their presence in areas where there weren't any cp's... giving more control over the placement of civs in the game.

Once you have done all of that, save your mission with a new name and preview it. You should have a full on battle on your hands!

Just include Urban Conquest v1.05 in the mission title and Urban Conquest v1.05 by tvig0r0us in the mission description. You will also want to open up the folder for your mission and open the description.ext file. This is where you will find all of the values for the params menu. The last entry in each category is the default value for your mission. Go through all of them and change the default values to your liking. Save the file and your now ready to export and distribute the mission to your friends.

This mission was built from the ground up with the use of no preconfigured modules and very very little borrowed code. If you should decide to modify any of my code, do not come to me and ask me to fix it.

If you happen to run into any issues at all, please report them so I can fix them!!! Thanks and enjoy

Thanks to everyone that gave it a go in it's initial stages, your input helped make it what it is today. Special thanks to Zonekiller for getting me off on the right foot with the scripting language for this game.... it's waaaaay different from lua and took some getting used to. It would have taken alot longer without his assistance. Special thanks also to Delta99, who tested the hell out of the mission and gave me some great input and encouragment along the journey. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

[kiberkiller]

From the description it seems to be a mix of mostly everything I personally like in ARMA and even proper AI support. I am definitely giving it a try.

---------- Post added at 08:17 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:28 AM ----------

Alright after giving it a shot I'd have to say that the concept is good, and should be expanded on, but the current execution is quite lacking.
Right now it's very hard to keep track of what the hell is going on.

Here's some things you can improve on:
1) Respawn Points:
Respawn points should be a visually distinguishable place, like a base. ARMA 2 has a feature that lets you dynamically create base, you should look it up if you're not familiar with it.
AI should be given a random spawn position within that respawn point, to stop AI from clipping into each other on respawn.
2) Capture Points:
Should also be a visually distinguishable place, preferable something with a flag that would indicate which faction the point is currently occupied by and also to make it visible to players so you don't have to force them to use GPS or check the map constantly.
You could also make it a Warfare style camp, that would give the defenders a small advantage (cover).
3) Groups:
IMO the AI should operate in groups, rather than as individual soldiers. That way players would be able to have a control over a certain AI group.
I would make it the same way Warfare does is, each player slot is a player controlled group with AI units and those slots that aren't filled are fully AI controlled groups

[Kremator]

Grats on release mate. Will look at it later.

[DeltaFiveOne]

Tvig0r0us, I remember installing the PC version of OFP2 just to exclusively play your missions on that platform. OFP2 had a lot of potential, too bad Codemasters always lets down their community with bad support. Looking forward to see how this one develops for sure!

[Mono]

Sounds pretty good I'll download and have a play later after work! Good job on the release! As mentioned above I also installed OFP2 just to play your missions — again shame the game wasn't up to the standards.

[tvig0r0us]

Alright after giving it a shot I'd have to say that the concept is good, and should be expanded on, but the current execution is quite lacking.
Right now it's very hard to keep track of what the hell is going on.

Here's some things you can improve on:
1) Respawn Points:
Respawn points should be a visually distinguishable place, like a base. ARMA 2 has a feature that lets you dynamically create base, you should look it up if you're not familiar with it.
AI should be given a random spawn position within that respawn point, to stop AI from clipping into each other on respawn.
2) Capture Points:
Should also be a visually distinguishable place, preferable something with a flag that would indicate which faction the point is currently occupied by and also to make it visible to players so you don't have to force them to use GPS or check the map constantly.
You could also make it a Warfare style camp, that would give the defenders a small advantage (cover).
3) Groups:
IMO the AI should operate in groups, rather than as individual soldiers. That way players would be able to have a control over a certain AI group.
I would make it the same way Warfare does is, each player slot is a player controlled group with AI units and those slots that aren't filled are fully AI controlled groups

First of all, thank you all for giving it a go. Your feedback will help me get the mission moving in the right direction and I appreciate it.

Your initial rection to the mission is exactly what I'm going for. You're not supposed to really know what's going on in a furious urban combat environment. While I appreciate your take on what there should and should not be in a mission with regards to capture points, I could not disagree more on your first two points. It was meant to force the player into checking the map in order to evaluate the situation. While I don't pretend to be creating some kind of realism mission here, I also want the play to adhere to some elements of reality, first and foremost, the assesment of the situation and cautious approach to movement must be based on the players awareness of his/her immediate surroundings. I've never seen a video clip of real millitary action in an urban environment where there were flags being raised on every block to demark control of the territory or camps on every corner.... they are fighting in a raw urban environment where the use of the buildings means everything.

Which brings me to your point about spawning. I agree that I will need to implement some kind of check to prevent ai from spawning into each other, that is quite annoying. However, the spawning is completely dependent on the building positions that surround the control points. Basically, all spawning (even players) will be spawned at a randomly selected building position within the capture distance of a friendly controlled CP. This is not something I want to change because it is exactly what I wanted it to be.

To the point about groups... this is already in play. Just as you can recruit soldiers into a group, so do the AI. Here's how it works. When an AI soldier is spawned into the game, they are on their own. Each AI soldier will check soldiers within a predifined radius and if they are alone they recruit the soldier into their group. Once a group is established only the leader of the group performs this check. When they encounter another lone soldier, they recruit him into the group and so on until the group is at the maximum size set in the options. As for the player, all you have to do is approach a friendly soldier and once you are close enough you will be given a recruit soldier action. Just like the AI you will be able to recruit soldiers to your group up to the maximum specified in the options. When you die, your group carries on without you and you respawn alone again.

A note about vehicles. Instead of soldiers looking around for vehicles, the code is actually running on the vehicle looking around for soldiers. If a soldier is close enough to a vehicle and there is a driver, commander or gunner seat available and unassigned, it is then recruited into a group that is exclusive to the vehicle and assigned to the empty seat. When the player boards the vehicle, if it is occupied, all of the existing crew up to the group limit will be added to the player's group, the rest will be released into another group an unassigned from the vehicle.

All of what I've listed in this post are aspects of the mission that are working exacly as I intended them to. Please do not get me wrong, I totally appreciate your input and I don't mean to sound like I'm discounting your opinion in any way. I am tired however of missions for arma that are all ridgid in structure and lack in action. The whole point of creating this mission was to drop the player(s) into a balls out engagement in an urban evnvironment, much like those you would find on youtube if you searched for footage from Iraq or Afghanistan. War in an environment like that is confusing and it's on you to keep a cool head and not get your butt shot off

I'm ranting... sorry I'm going to try to address the spawn clipping issue and get the MP working. Thanks so much for the kind words about my work for OFDR fella's, it means alot to me

Cheers

[markb50k]

question about engineers fixing and medics healing.. could you briefly describe how you are doing that..

medics generally get tasked pretty well by the AI already, with wounded going to medics on their own to be healed.. is yours anything past this?

Same for engineers? for which i dont see any current functionality supporting this in vanilla

[tvig0r0us]

question about engineers fixing and medics healing.. could you briefly describe how you are doing that..

medics generally get tasked pretty well by the AI already, with wounded going to medics on their own to be healed.. is yours anything past this?

Same for engineers? for which i dont see any current functionality supporting this in vanilla

To be perfectly honest, I've not even begun to examine my options in regards to healing and repair. I know that the AI take if upon themselves to execute a certain amount of these actions, but I intend to promote more of it and involve the squads by having them guard the area until the heal/repair is completed and then move on to their objective. If these commands are not native to the game I'll have to write up a function to execute the command via script. One thing that's nice is that I know these actions are available throught the config for each soldier of the given type, it's just a matter of getting them to execute the action through the script. I've tried to leave as much to the will of the AI as possible by only manipulating their move targets, soldier targets and combat modes... Hopefully I won't have to do too much tinkering in the way of creating artificial actions for the AI as I find them unreliable at times. After a long time of thinking the AI in this game sucks, I've figured out a few manipulations that seem to make them respond pretty well to certain situations. Whatever I come up with I'll let you know.

BTW.. great work on your Apocalypse missions... I really enjoy giving them a roll from time to time Keep up the good work!

Cheers

[markb50k]

ah ok, i thought you wrote that it was already in the mission.

Well, cool, any routines you come up for these kinds of things, let me know, and please if you have any questions on how i do my AI routines, dePBO or PM me..

Good luck!

[kiberkiller]

First of all, thank you all for giving it a go. Your feedback will help me get the mission moving in the right direction and I appreciate it.

Your initial rection to the mission is exactly what I'm going for. You're not supposed to really know what's going on in a furious urban combat environment. While I appreciate your take on what there should and should not be in a mission with regards to capture points, I could not disagree more on your first two points. It was meant to force the player into checking the map in order to evaluate the situation. While I don't pretend to be creating some kind of realism mission here, I also want the play to adhere to some elements of reality, first and foremost, the assesment of the situation and cautious approach to movement must be based on the players awareness of his/her immediate surroundings. I've never seen a video clip of real millitary action in an urban environment where there were flags being raised on every block to demark control of the territory or camps on every corner.... they are fighting in a raw urban environment where the use of the buildings means everything.

Okay, I see your point, in that case I have a counterpoint.

Capture Points, I assume, are supposed to be points or places of strategic or tactical value. In real life those would be tall building, high ground, sandbag strips, weapon caches.
In the game, right now, capture points seems to not have any strategic or tactical value whatsoever. It seems like they're random points scattered around the maps.

If you want more realistic approach then you have to make capture points to have actual tactical or strategical value, something that give some sort of advantage to the side controlling it. Even a simple bunker, tower, roof of a tall building or a strip of sandbags is already a point of tactical value.

That way, it not only be realistic but it will also improve the gameplay, since players (with more than half a brain working) will instantly be able to recognize a tactically important place and figure out that it's a capture point.

---------- Post added at 06:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:23 PM ----------

Speaking of AI routines. I think you should refrain from editing AI and try to only rely on built-in waypoint system.
1) It would ensure the best compatibility with all kinds of AI related mods.
2) ARMA 2 AI already does most of necessary stuff itself.