Idea/suggestion for a SP Mod

Hi,

I was fooling around in the editor with a night, heavy rain, thunder, setting in the empty Altis and i thought about something.

(Yes...DayZ influence involved...)

Since creating a complete, detailed mod it would take huge amount of work, how about trying to put something similar into practice but with a different approach, if it helps psychologically, simple (simplistic) but solid steps towards a great result, which doesn't have to be a 1:1 copy of something else.

Thinking about it this way, could also leave the creators room for a decision to take it further to also become a MP mod later on, or just a SP with many things added after they have "the base" of it.

1. POPULATING THE MAP, NPCs

So, the first thing that came to my mind was, hmmm, how do we populate this place...then i thought about googling: "arma 3 generate civilians" and i found a script that does that:

That's one step in the process, now with that script's (or similar one) abilities + some tweaks (spawning system tweaks too if necessary) to make it spawn also "OPFOR", we could have civilians which would be friendly to you and wander around looking for help and protection because their lack of skills otherwise they will simply get killed and "OPFOR" which would be hostile, like "bandits" for example, combined with another "type" of civilians (would be use the same civilians models) which would be the "infected" (or whatever you want to call them), having animations like in "Left 4 Dead" for example, with some tweaks to the textures to give them a proper look.

When "OPFOR" and the "infected" meet, they will fight each other (and you, of course, if they please to take their time), the only friendlies (for you) are the "non-infected" civilians.

The "OPFOR" will have random standard gear, classes, going around either lonewolves or small, variating in numbers, groups or standard squads, so you have something to loot after you kill them.

The "non-infected" civilians, i guess they could get a pistol and civilian clothing since they are just, well, casual civilians. (speaking about it, maybe they could also use some in-game voices like "i need help" (and similar ones used in the main game when you get wounded) when a hostile is withing a certain distance from them AND you also being in a certain range, for example, a civilian spots a enemy, "infected" or "OPFOR" at 100m and you are in 100m from the enemy or the civilian, automatically, at random, he will shout one of those lines (the ones mentioned above)

As in the video above, all 3 categories of NPCs will spawn mainly in the towns and as well in the outskirts but a lot less per X distance compared to the towns, having more room for maneuver to move from A to B.

P.S

How about Arma 3 standard military squads wandering around also, as "the last pros" remaining willing to help.

I guess there would be 4 factions now, "opfor" (bandits, random standard gear, classes, going around either lonewolves or small, variating in numbers, groups or standard squads), "infected" ("zombies", or standard civilians with a re-texture and weird animations), "non-infected" ("clean", friendly, civilians with casual clothes and a handgun) and "blufor" (similar to the guys from "The last ship").

2. LOOT

The "loot", food (meat from wild animals like the rabbits), health packs, water, weapons, gear, etc and all those things necessary for the players will spawn in more "distinctive" buildings, like police stations, shops/stores, wrecks (these (wrecks) would go along with the existent assets from the main map), gas stations, scrap yards, in those houses from the outskirts which are 2 or 3 "per hill"/in the open fields, etc etc etc (you get the point), thus, less frustration caused by placing loot in random houses with no orientation by having already a "preset" of buildings in mind, which i mentioned above.

Campfires are nice, i guess the meat can be cooked like that with wood picked up from around trees in town, or from almost everywhere in the outskirts.

P.S

I see that it's also possible to have a script to do random placing of loot, if indeed works well, then great.

3. WEAPONS + MAIN CHARACTER

This being a "basic" concept, i guess for a start the default weapons will be enough, there are plenty of weapon mods out there. Or:

As for the main character, just the usual dude looking around for some clothes/gear to put on, some model already present in the main game. (as with the weapons, there are mods out there)

So, to sum this up, i have no knowledge of Arma 3 modding but putting it this way, in steps like 1 2 3, in a simplistic manner, i guess it can help along the way the guys that could put something like this into practice.

It's just a basic concept, of course, i could write until the forum crashes but it's not about creating a game from the ground up.

To close, the steps of the process put in a simple way:

1. NPCs

A script that would spawn the factions, "OPFOR", the "non-infected" civilians", the "infected civilians" and the "BLUFOR" (as i detailed all of these above) and categorize them as A, B, C, D and their respective role in the world.

The "infected" are the only ones that require bonus work, the "left 4 dead" type animations of the casual zombies + a basic re-texture.

Script example: http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?181485-Infected-Script-by-Gulozwood "combined" somewhat with a populating one.

2. LOOT

This is just about patience when placing the stuff around in the way i mentioned above + the campfire thing which i guess i won't be that big of a deal.

Or a script that randomly places the loot.

3. WEAPONS + MAIN CHARACTER

Nothing more to add.

So, 2 scripts (loot and NPC) + the rest of the details i've mentioned.

"BangaBob" and others made some scripts similar to the ones needed.

ARMA 3 is a huuuge step from ARMA 2 regarding everything, specially animations, stability, performance etc, that's why i think it would be nice to have something like this also in ARMA 3.

Maybe this would get even easier if needed scripts are out there to combine them.

Thanks for taking the time to read, if i will remember something else, maybe i will edit here and there later.

Maybe you have some questions ?