Dynamic War

[MrN]

Quote[/b] ]I have played this a bit in multiplayer

Was it hosted or dedicated?

Quote[/b] ]heli wont work as its meant

What goes wrong?

[kutya]

Quote[/b] ]I found a bug :-D. I am surprised to, since it is so easy to get. If you save the game and try to load it up again to pick up where you left off the game CTDs just before the loading finishes.

Can someone confirm this?

It's importart for me, because it really happens (not just an isolated case), I'll have great troubles with my own work.

[Sanctuary]

Quote[/b] ]I found a bug :-D. I am surprised to, since it is so easy to get. If you save the game and try to load it up again to pick up where you left off the game CTDs just before the loading finishes.

Can someone confirm this?

It's importart for me, because it really happens (not just an isolated case), I'll have great troubles with my own work.

In the OFP version, there was a a limitation on the amount of variables being saved.

Too many variables being saved and it was impossible to load them without a CTD, i guess ArmA do the same if your mission crash when loading your save.

The 1st time it was noticed in OFP was with an older version of ECP, as this mod used a lot of variables , and as the OFP game save will actually save variables generated by a mod in addition to variables generated by a mission, the limit was easily reached.

The only way to solve this problem is to lower drastically the amount of different variables used by your mission (in the case of ECP mod, the latest version lowered a lot their variable usage to prevent the save/load bug).

In the DynaWar template, as i was not as understanding this variable problem as i do now (if i would have made the template now i would have wrote several script differently), to workaround the original save/load feature, i made a save game script built in the mission.

In which the player could save only when one of the mission given to you was totally finished (no more of the mission scripts running) and a "purge" script finished to reset all the variable to their default and removed useless corpses and objects (created during the misson that was given to you by your HQ).

But while you are always in development of your mission, i suggest you to lower the amount of variable used.
And check if your running scripts are ending correctly before the save feature can be used by the player (saving can actually break scripts that are running during the save process)

[kutya]

This will be OT, but I don't want to start a new thread if don't need.

Thanks for the info Sanctuary, but I know about that happening in OFP. Actually I made GDCE (the project I'm talking about) similar to what you're speaking. I wanted to know if it happens in AA too.

Since the successor of GDCE has a more subtle architecture, it needs large amounts of data, which would be a bit hard to develop using the SoW saving method. I already coded too much for GDCE1 in this area (and was surprised that it actually worked! ).

[Maddmatt]

A good way to reduce the number of variables (ECP did this to stop the crashing from loading saves) is to use arrays. Try to keep all your variables in one (or a few) large arrays.

I can be a real pain to organise, and changing this dynamic mission to do this will take plenty of work.

Maybe a better option would be to ask BIS to sort it out. If someone can confirm that it is definitely the number of variables causing the crash then it should be reported to the bugtracker so BIS can fix it. This bug was a major problem in OFP, maybe BIS will fix it now if it is reported.

[Drongo69]

I haven't played this mission, so this is all theoretical. But if this is basically the same as previous DMA style missions, then the only thing that really needs to be saved are a few important campaign variables. This can be done at any time with creative use of savestatus, loadstatus and a game logic (as with the pioneering work by the SoW team).

So the campaign state can easily be saved at any time (key variables), but not the exact mission state (location of units, status of current mission, etc).

[colligpip]

Quote[/b] ]I have played this a bit in multiplayer

Was it hosted or dedicated?

Quote[/b] ]heli wont work as its meant

What goes wrong?

I opened the pbo saved it to multiplayer and hosted a game just to see what would happen. I could play I had all the mission targets etc, not sure if they were seeing it in breifing was only a quick test. The only thing that def didnt seem to work was when I called for a heli the real players didnt join it when in multiplayer. Thats as far as i got but we where havinga luagh doing it when i manually flew the heli to mission target going back to base getting a new mission etc. Ill try some more tonight.

[MehMan]

Hmm, this mission seems to be quite a hog, it lags the game down more than a 200 man battle, at least in my case.

[kutya]

Quote[/b] ]A good way to reduce the number of variables (ECP did this to stop the crashing from loading saves) is to use arrays. Try to keep all your variables in one (or a few) large arrays.

I'm already doing the thing in arrays. But it would be a really nasty thing to believably reproduce ongoing battles and other details.
My global vars sqs file is at 13kb and I'm far from finished. But most of it are constants, so I feel sorry that OFP/AA doesn't support them. I almost nowhere enter exact numbers or data, to make everything flexible.

[MrN]

0.90c
Added a check on the evac script for the chopper- if it dies another can be called
Added blood/smoke script to spawned units
Added destroyed script to all vehicles
Added Mandomissiles as support
Added Patrol mission
Added 2 more US bases with local units
No artillery on POW mission failed, now missiles
Riflesmoke was being removed when relaxing
Removed the cce codes
Moved S&D location
Enemy experience is earned with kills and effects enemy skill
Big Lag reduction

I have tried playing this and the previous version in MP and both times it's been a mess, I'm not sure if I'm up to the task of converting it properly.

Instead, I'm thinking of team switching at certain points into a SF team to do a different set of missions, blow up fuel dumps, take out SAM sites etc. Although at the moment it doesn't really have any structure or pattern I thought I'd better put it up because it should run a lot better than previous versions, I hope.

Update on the front page, more links to come hopefully.