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Hulahuga

Escape From Chernarus - HulaZone

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Hi,

Thanks for replying so quickly, we are playing version 4.0 and have raided every depot on the map this evening but no drone or any backpacks. hope you can help :)

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Hi,

Thanks for replying so quickly, we are playing version 4.0 and have raided every depot on the map this evening but no drone or any backpacks. hope you can help :)

Haha, that is some darn good work ;).

Well there is a chance that no backpacks or drone will spawn, but that chance should be quite slim statistically speaking. Hmm, I'll look into it in a testbuild of mine (setting their spawn rate to 100%) to see if it is the actual spawning that is wrong, or if you are simply extremely unlucky :P.

Any other issues or feedback that you have btw?

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I am too lazy to find and download all dependencies, but want to play it... The All-inclusive 500 MB download dows not work. Either it stops somewhere at 100 MB, or restarts, seems like GDrive is crap, do you have another mirror?

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I am too lazy to find and download all dependencies, but want to play it... The All-inclusive 500 MB download dows not work. Either it stops somewhere at 100 MB, or restarts, seems like GDrive is crap, do you have another mirror?

What? Didn't you just say you were able to play it and had everything lol?

Whenever I try it though I have like 8 mb/s, no interruptions ever... Sure your ISP isn't the one that is crapping? XD Might be that your dl-location has run out of space too.

Re-uploading it to dropbox anyhow so you can get a link in either case to compare it to. (I'll make a post about it here when it is done)

Edited by Hulahuga

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I was able to run it before an update of yours, when there were less dependencies... No my drives are OK. I try another browser other than Opera. My ISP is Deutsche Telekom and usually it is fine. Thanks for your reply btw and no offense :)

EDIT: Firefox did the job... Got it.

Edited by tortuosit

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Ah, ok, good to hear! Deleting the dropbox link then :)

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Hi, seems both links not working properly.

The PBO will not "Play" because it's dependant on loads and loads of addons and scripts.

Tried to start in SP missions and LAN................still same problem. Dependant on lots of other things.

The .rar will not open "Network Error"

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Kommiekat - It is supposed to be dependent lol :P. If it weren't dependent, you would end up in a game-world that tries to spawn a ton of new cool features, but simply doesn't find them on your harddrive...

Just download the mod-package with a browser that isn't borked, just like the other guy did (page 3) :)

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Hula, if I download the 500 MB package, what is the minimum requirements? "-mod=BAF;PMC;ACR;@cba_co;@your500mbmodpackage" and that's it? I'm sure I don't need acr... I ask because when I'm back home I need to debug it; ArmA complains about some missing files when I start it with the above mods.

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That's really weird. You only need CBA and the mod-package =)

You might however receive complaints about .cfg stuff, but that is not due to an error on my end but rather something inherent both to arma 2 (backpacks), and one of the addons that are in use. It won't affect your gameplay however the slightest afaik.

Edited by Hulahuga

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Hi,

Any news about the backpacks/drone?

Okay, so we just finished a test run on a custom test build of mine where I set the equipment and backpacks to 100% spawn chance and for some reason no backpack items spawn, but the new binoculars do. This must mean that everything that goes under the category of backpacks in the classes (i.e. both backpacks and the drone, which is in backpack form) need another call trigger to spawn properly. If anyone has any tips I appreciate it, but I'll look into it myself asap :).

Btw, I'm going on a brief holiday to Gotland now for a couple of days, so I'll be able to answer stuff and research the code, but I won't be able to add stuff and test it in the actual mission other than tweaking and balancing values...

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You might however receive complaints about .cfg stuff, but that is not due to an error on my end but rather something inherent both to arma 2 (backpacks), and one of the addons that are in use. It won't affect your gameplay however the slightest afaik.

Yeah it's complaining about "CFGMagazines..blah..tracers"... Thx for letting me know.

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---Update 0.41---

Added/Fixed

All form of backpacks have been properly added and are verified functioning in-game (this includes the UAV, Heavy weapons, backpacks and ammo packs).

Note: This was a bit tricky as ArmA scripts make a division between equipment/weapons and backpack items, and I thus had to manipulate the scripts a bit to actually spawn them. I did however not want to make it all messy with backpacks auto-spawning with ammo next to them (as that is the way the original arrays were constructed), and thus had to create a new array for backpacks spawning for each of the three relevant depot types, that also had to be integrated into their core-script to function properly to avoid issues with privately set variables and whatnot. This will make adding any new item, now including backpacks, to the game a piece of cake from now on as I use Squint in conjunction with Excel and a bit of .VBA code to automate hellish amounts of tedious copy pasting (I did this for the first build, and it just took forever, so when I added the addonpackage I really wanted to avoid a similar situation and thus had a go at VBA). The Excel list also means that I can tweak any lines of code for the weapon lists without fearing botching it, and I can also make massive changes in a matter of seconds, as well as getting a much better overview for balancing (which needs a bit of work, and that you can expect changes to come 0.5).

Edited by Hulahuga

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So I was thinking I could share a bit of my workflow with you guys today.



I give you,

---The BI-dashboard for Escape From Chernarus - HulaZone---

I've been working for the most part in this now pretty gigantic excel document for the most part when adding new items (and now balancing them, their drop chances and magazine amounts). This might seem like a pain at first, and it to some extent is, but what it enables me is to quickly scan off and change a huge number of values, and automatically get a complete code string that I can add into the class list for the mod, as well as get an overview of the direct effects for the end users.

The following is the main page, which feeds into the others. Among other things it gives me a better overview of the spawn chances, and if you take a look at P(X) you might have noticed that that is the chance of an item appearing at least once within 4 ammo depots, as well as its specified probability.

dhjm.jpg

As you could see in the above picture the P(X) values are generally quite high, and due to the large amount of new weapons I've added (the number of weapons, backpacks and equipment - excluding grenades, regular binoculars, mines, charges and navigational equipment - that can spawn at the ammo depots now total 180) I've noticed you can sometimes receive an overwhelming amount of different TYPES of items, rather than their individual amounts. This has led me to do a statistical analysis (as I have perfect data) where I can view the percentage chance of the count of unique drops per category per ammo depot. As you see these are all following normal distributions, although not a perfect bell shape, as the probabilities range from 40-1 % per item.

To accomplish this I originally sought to go with not only perfect data, but also perfect calculation to retrieve the exact figures as a bit of a mathematical and statistical experiment (I study business and economics, so that's kind of why :P). It turns out though that as you increase the number of unique entities, as well as especially increasing the number of allowed probabilities (and I wanted my sought after model to allow for as many probabilities as there are entities) this grew increasingly complex. When you only have one probability, but up to a near infinite number of entities you can go for a binomial distribution to calculate it (which is an extension of combinatorics), and I could then have used a binomial distribution for each probability class. This however means that I cant get a grand total of the actual ammo depot, but only for each class (which is fine for some purposes, and I might actually use it soon, but not for this). So I looked at combinatorics itself and quickly realized that this would grow overly difficult to accomplish, with papers written on a high level in the Academia about it (search for multinomial distributions, or look at this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multinomial_distribution). This of course frustrated me a bit as I want a clean way to calculate it, however after talking to a friend of mine who masters in AI we both agreed that for the ends of this task it would just save me a great deal of trouble to go for a bit more a brute force and statistical method (simulation model) rather than calculating probabilities fully (combinatorics). This, now that I actually fully read the wikipedia page ended up with being more or less what the talk about under "To simulate a multinomial distribution", although we never viewed that beforehand.

Here is a snapshot of one of the random number generators. As you see I've made a list that automatically retrieves the latest version of the probabilities. It then transposes the formula, without distorting the references (which was a bit of a pain, but I found a nice guide online). A random number generator giving integers between 0 and 99 is then setup, going the same number of columns as the entities, and then repeated to slightly over 10 000 rows to give a lower statistical error due to sampling issues. A IF code then checks the randomly generated number (which I can iterate freely) to the probability (just like the mission code) and gives a 1 for spawn, and a 0 for no spawn. A SUM is then made of each row for the true/false values to count the number of spawned items in the ammo depot for that sample. This is then fed into the pivot table shown in the previous image where I can get some nice numbers, and graphs, of the probabilities for the number of unique spawned items for each category in the ammo depot.

As you see the expected value for the number of special weapons is quite high right now, which I will change before the next update is out to make it a bit more authentic, and difficult for the players. The same probably has to be done to the basic weapons and only a tiny bit to the launchers (there are doubles there). Thus I am a bit of a turning point if I will actually continue with spawning everything more or less random like this, only with different probabilities, or if I instead should go for a bit more realistic (though maybe a bit boring) version where a number weapon categories are chosen instead by random, where you are certain of a fair number of weapons spawning, but all from the same weapon family (like AKs). This would be a viable solution with the high number of scoped versions and whatnot (e.g. AK-family would then include have a first check for AK-47/AK-74/SA-58, a second for AEK/AK-107/AN-94/AK-12 and Vityaz/Magpul or something, and then do checks for scoped versions or not, here with another set of probabilities to make each category of depot slightly different).

This is however still very much in the air, and I will definitely not implement weapon families until after this balanced update. I would however very much like to hear your feedback. If you also have any feedback on the classification of weapons, or their relative chance of appearance, that would be great =)

---------- Post added at 12:56 ---------- Previous post was at 11:33 ----------

iat7.jpg

Edited by Hulahuga

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---Update 0.45 Released---



Please feel free to come with feedback!

Implemented and verified changes

  • Massive rework of the dashboard of the mod: everything is now properly sorted, the spawn chances, number of weapons and magazines dropped homogenized and very much reworked, new statistical analysis of the probable number of unique drops per depot per category (see: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?155860-Escape-From-Chernarus-HulaZone&p=2425672&viewfull=1#post2425672).
  • Some code reorganization, following the rework of the dashboard.
  • Lower spawn chance per item overall to account for all the new weapons, albeit a slightly higher drop chance for some place-able heavy weapons.
  • Boats.
  • New airplanes (minijets and Cessnas) and different kinds of gliders spawning on the airfields and countryside.
  • New fixed defenses on the northwest airfield, including a number of AA defenses, as well as a parked tank.
  • New/edited/removed journal entries; should now prove for a bit more entertaining, as well as efficient read plus some other minor text tweaks.
  • New guard type (introducing a new weapon for the guards, which should be able to diversify the early gameplay quite a lot), as well as some new enemy types.
  • Two new roadblock vehicles (including one that is quite deadly ;)).
  • Some new ambient vehicles.
  • The roaming ATV with the US soldier should now be removed.

New build is now being uploaded to the hosting, and news-messages plastered :P

Edited by Hulahuga

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0.45: It's not out yet?

Not yet, but it is coming out tonight most probably ;)

Note: Added some new stuff just there

Edit: and there.

---------- Post added at 20:00 ---------- Previous post was at 19:17 ----------

It is now!

Edit: Mini quickfix: some of the intro texts tweaked.

Edited by Hulahuga

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Hey Hula, with your latest release I started a new mission. I play alone, i.e. put your pbo into the mpmission folder. In the options, I set enemy skills to the second lowest, but whenever the shoot at me, they hit me hard, i.e. I immediately fall and start bleeding and shout for help. Seems like enemy helps me, but not enough to stand up. End of the game. So I have to work with intermediate saves. But back to the AI skill: do they really get the AI skill I have set? How can I test it? When I go back to the lobby screen and the options, all settings are reverted...

Another question: can I have friendly AI buddies?

And: it seems to be much more ressource intensive as a localhost multiplayer game. Is that possible? I have no experience with local multiplayer... But if I start the pbo as a single player mission, I can't have the settings...

TIA

The Annoying SP Gamer ;)

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You should look into playing on recruit - found in the server settings - as that is what sets things like extended armor and whatnot (the specifics can be found under game settings, difficulty in the main menu). I am sure the AI settings have an effect though, because they tend to act a bit retarded at times if you play on difficulties lower than normal :).

I think you might actually be able to play with AI if you tweak the mission file or set it up in the host menu (not sure if it exits).

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Have you ever thought of making this into a more persistant mission?

As in get away from the whole "Try to escape" thing and go for a more survival mission where you're a group of rebels or whatever and give players the posibility to create camps, fortify positions ect.

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Have you ever thought of making this into a more persistant mission?

As in get away from the whole "Try to escape" thing and go for a more survival mission where you're a group of rebels or whatever and give players the posibility to create camps, fortify positions ect.

YES! You are right on the money there ;).

If you read the list of planned features you'll see a number of things that will contribute to that :). It is also the aim of almost everything I will implement now to bring about new gameplay possibilities, and having a reason for staying in Chernarus is probably the best way to go for it =) (not saying you can't escape anymore, it will simply be what you are free to do if you so please).

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but in sp mode how i can "revive"???

Right now, as IRL, you can't ;).

I'm looking into doing a custom respawn mechanic for SP as discussed previously in this thread :)

Also, quick update:

All vehicle, static weaponry and infantry spawns have been given an overhaul to balance the difficulty levels properly, as well as make a bit more sense considering real life army structure and whatnot. Some new vehicles (about 6), infantry and static weaponry are also included. Please note that this is still work in progress, and minor things will probably change:

https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/809/nlfk.jpg

https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/833/v1u4.jpg

https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/853/6uxw.jpg

https://imageshack.com/scaled/large/703/ev0r.jpg

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