ansin11

@Gambit: I can't help but die when Vortex explodes with me sitting in the passenger compartment ... It seems to me that we have different views on how gear is supposed to be provided. The way I understand @Xwatt, he removed the Arsenal to be able to costumize what's available at base without having to edit the very unwieldy hardcoded .sqf files that handle the Arsenal limitations. This seems consistent with the public approach to these Zeus missions, seeing how our limited supplies included 20 rangefinders but 0 binoculars as well as an endless amount of Mohawks. @Xwatt: Adding a "Save" option to the map settings would allow people to save in the field, something I don't think we want. I'd say just put an addAction on the equipment box in base.

My routine for the last two sundays (Bravo Autorifleman) was: Remove NVG Remove laser from Mk200 Take sidearm Remove all spare magazines for that sidearm from my inventory again Remove two blue smoke grenades Take two white smoke grenades Take backpack Put a third spare belt for the Mk200 into the backpack Take binoculars or variation thereof On every single respawn. I don't see the gameplay value in that. I don't mind getting my kit from a limited supply box. None of my gear is special or rare; the only things I looted the past two weeks are FAKs and grenades. But I do mind going through the same tedious process of combining the provided basic items into the gear I want to use every time I die. Plus Arma's boxes don't come with the nice item categories the Arsenal has, so there is always a bit of searching involved. And then I have to call Overlord mid-mission because there are no 6.5 mm 200 round belts left at base. All I'm hoping for is to be able to get my stuff from the box, hit "Save" somewhere, go out and fight, then die, then hit "Load" and be reset to the loadout I put together in the beginning.

Please provide the option to save one's loadout at base so we can simply load it after respawn. The Arsenal is not needed for that.

Alpha worked very well tonight, especially during the first assault on the Vehicle Pool. Being able to focus on command chat and FSG while @Jenkins coordinated a beautiful attack with his team was a really nice experience - my favourite part of the mission! After that it all became more chaotic of course, but in the end it defenitely was a good OP. Enemy CAS was a bit much though. Big shoutout to @Jenkins for his teamleading! Also to @Kacper for his frequent medical aid ...

That credit belongs to @Mark T:

I feel obliged to point out that even though I frequently went down or died (often enough for it to be discussed on stream in the Zeus channel), none of my deaths felt sketchy or unfair to me, hence why I didn't get frustrated. I had lots of fun and lots of direct action, I can't complain about the mission at all. Sure, Killfarm was tricky to take, but not because of Zeus helping the AI or because we made our way there on foot. No, it seemed to me that it was tricky to take because of the overall defensive layout of the site, especially the bunker on the hill. We had to clear that bunker to be able to reach our objective, but the only entrance to it was on a slope facing towards the Killfarm, open to fire from that objective. Getting to that bunker, clearing that bunker and then getting from the bunker down to the Killfarm was the big challenge of that objective, and it felt right to me. Sure, a Hellcat wrecked me after I had just been reinserted, but that could have hit (or missed) anyone; in fact we were lucky that only one of us died there. I wish I recorded that, it was quite epic! Sure, I died a few more times, but that was during room clearing or when I was out in the open during firefights, nothing special. It's these deaths that actually improve my immersion: CQB is supposed to be dangerous and lethal, unfortunately the AI reacts too slowly to carry this over to gameplay, so dying serves me right for attempting to clear a house all on my own. Players take risks they know they can only get away with because the AI is predictable, slow and stupid, so I don't see a problem with Zeus bridging exactly that gap and thus making these missions more tactical and teamplay-oriented. In my opinion, the more Zeus(es), the less gap - brilliant, as long as it doesn't turn into PVP.

I really like the idea to spawn ground vehicle rewards at the side mission first and then, after ten minutes or so, move them to base if nobody took them. Sounds like a simple yet effective improvement to me. Sure, it doesn't cover every eventuality, but as this thread shows it's safe to say that it's practically impossible to cover every eventuality.

yours in freedom

A thing that I thought of recently is that we could ditch one of the support assets (either CAS or armor or even both) and have a mobile mortar team instead. Could be great fun. Just an idea though.

Now my info on this topic might be horribly outdated (in that case this suggestion is pointless), but in case it is not, here goes: As far as I know, AW Zeus access is authorised via UID check upon joining the server, leading to staff with Zeus access always having Zeus access, which is, I believe, quite annoying because of Zeus pings when one just wants to play the game. Then again I've never been pinged, so I don't know if the ping actually reaches somebody with Zeus access when the interface is not open. In case these prerequisites are true, I have an idea how to make life a little easier. Pretty simple: make Zeus access optional. Add an option to the diary or assign a keybind like Ctrl + [Zeus] to players with Zeus access that toggles the player actually being added to Zeus (via assignCurator and unassignCurator).

I disagree with you @Xwatt, this has not steered away from constructive criticism at all. In fact, this post's entire comment section never contained any constructive criticism. Next I would like to decline your kind offer to go somewhere else, because I actually like it here, recently even more with the new big Zeus missions you guys are creating. Last but defenitely not least I want to clarify that I 100% do have a personal problem with the way especially I & A 3 is being handled. You are also 100% right that it is me thinking the development is disappointing; in short mostly because I see way more potential for I & A 3. I agree that I & A 4 development may take all the time it needs, but, as stated, I really dislike how I & A 3's potential is deliberately not being reached just because it is scheduled to be replaced at some point in the future. Of course I give my opinion on how I would like to see things being done, what other person's opinion should I give? You are right that I usually just criticise, however saying that I have not once acknowledged the developer's achievements is only true as far as this post goes. And again, the problem here is not even the original post, the problem to me is that I was asked to give my opinion (On what I thought was wrong with the original code) - which I intentionally did not do in the initial post because I wanted to keep things calm and focused on, well, locking and unlocking Ghost Hawk door guns. What then followed was this, and that's just what I was trying to avoid because this was, as always, bound to become offensive to everyone involved while also being quite pointless and lightyears away from what I was trying to do - help improving the coop gamemode we all love. And I don't think that it is fair to now complain that I did respond and did give my opinion and the reasons for that opinion after I was asked to do just that.

To me that's the sad thing, you know exactly how to do all those things, you just choose not to. Instead you offer what I personally consider a rather poor excuse ("It works, I don't get paid and to some extend I don't care"). Really grinds my gears. But that's my problem, isn't it? My original post does not contain anything but "Hey I rewrote this thing because I wasn't happy with it and it had some problems, heres my code and the steps to use it". After that however, we wander into the realm of things I intentionally kept out of the original post in order to keep it more neutral and less offensive.

Regarding the more constructive portions: Performance: I would assume that using two local addActions on five clients is more performant than using a global addAction on each of the four (?) Ghost Hawks and then having all the up to 60 clients (Up to 55 of which are not the intended target client!) plus the precious server evaluate the condition on every frame, albeit provided they are within 50m of one of the Ghost Hawks. Implementation details: I chose to add the action to the pilot unit and not the helicopter because it would then be local and would also only be on the clients that actually need it. This approach also allows for the feature to be used on Zeus spawned or otherwise created Ghost Hawks, no matter if setup code had been run on them or not. I chose to add two local actions because it is easier to implement, plus it doesn't require the if-vehicle-gun-status-is-x-then-setUserActionText-else-do-other-stuff block of code to run on every frame. Performance, yay! I chose to not use (vehicle _originalTarget) isKindOf "Heli_Transport_01_base_F" because I messed up somewhere along the way and used typeOf instead of isKindOf, leading to my code not working on CTRG Ghost Hawk variants, so to fix that I used to given syntax (typeOf (vehicle _originalTarget) in ["B_Heli_Transport_01_F", "B_CTRG_Heli_Transport_01_sand_F", "B_CTRG_Heli_Transport_01_tropic_F"] and only now realize I could and should have used isKindOf. Performance, nooooo! Regarding the less constructive portions: I chose to use a String for the variable because it was easier to think about while working on the code (To use your common phrase: It works, so why not?). I chose to use a switch because I like BI's way of doing Arma functions. The file size is 1502 bytes, are you kidding me? Other: Like probably most people looking at and working with Arma 3 mission files I use Notepad++ instead of an IDE. I do think that the entire function framework is being provided to enable people to structure their mission code. Of course you could also run the entire I & A mission from two big files, but for some reason I wonder why that is not being done... Funny that you (of all the people) first mention readability and then later even proceed to explain that you yourself are not trying to make the code pretty or easy to read, but instead consider I & A 3 to have reached the stage where it just somehow needs to bridge the gap to I & A 4. For how much longer, a year by now? And that is what's so deeply disappointing and sad to me. I love this project, I'm sure you love it too, Stan, considering how much time you spend on it, and yet I & A 3 looks like it is being treated like an unworthy, unwanted piece of junk that nobody really cares about and it hurts seeing that! Hopefully that is just my perception of the matter, but I believe this will explain why my stance on I & A development is what it is. Apart from that I think that this approach is also terribly unfair towards other people and communities who (try to) use I & A or parts of it on their own servers. So then I see something I don't like and every once in a while I redo something. In this case I rework something that's recently been changed, I then put my system up on the forum for consideration and describe in three simple steps how to easily implement it into the project. Very well, use it or not, that's not my call. But then the first and only response is "What's wrong with the old system?". Alright, I point out what I didn't like. And the whole thing just erupts into... whatever this is, basically just to tell me "We don't want to use your solution because we don't need others to contribute possible improvements to systems that already work. You might have followed certain conventions and structures we are too lazy to follow and provided an easy way to simply copy and paste that code, but no thanks, there is no need.". Why am I even trying? It's just disappointing time and time again, and my expectations were low to begin with. Do what you want, it's your project. I'm done.

With the old system, for one, I didn't like having to lock the two guns manually and having to use the menu three times to achieve that. Makes the setup routine longer if you know what I mean. Also, the functionality used to include like ten files and looked like it could use some updating, so that was something I always kept in that "Yea, I will do that one day" place of my mind. When I noticed today that my scroll menu now said "Toggle guns" (?) I was not content with that because I could no longer tell wether I was locking or unlocking the guns without first trying it and then reading the chat to check the feedback - not ideal when flying. Not ideal in general either, but okay, I know the I & A development approach, so let's see what I can do later. When I then proceeded to put the action to use I noticed I now had two "Toggle guns" actions in my action menu, both with equal functionality. At that point I was pretty sure that this had actually not been tested. So naturally, I wanted to see what modifications had been done and behold - I could not find a corresponding function file. It took me (familiar with I & A 3 code) a good five to ten minutes to figure out that there was in fact no function, that instead a variable holding code had been used - placed in the convinient location "Scripts/misc/sharedFnc.sqf". Obviously. On a side note I hope that you, dear reader, can now understand why I frequently discredit I & A development: to me it is most often deeply disappointing. But that deserves a post of its own. One day. So after I managed to find the four lines of code I was interested in I already knew that I was defenitely not going to bother figuring out why the action duplicated or when and where the variable was placed in the script argument of an addAction command. I was also very disappointed at this point, and pretty angry too. I then more or less followed steps one to three of the original post, plus some testing to ensure functionality as well as my satisfaction. So basically, the more I saw, the less I liked it.

I noticed that the lock / unlock guns functionality for Ghost Hawks has been worked on. I didn't like what I saw and the action also duplicated itself upon use, so I rewrote and tested the code. Depending on the status of the guns the action shown will now either be "Lock guns" or "Unlock guns". It is only possible to lock or unlock both guns at the same time. Create file "fn_helicopterGuns.sqf" in "/Functions/CustomPlayerActions" and fill it with the following code: params ["_mode"]; switch (_mode) do { case "AddAction": { player addAction ["Lock guns", {["Lock"] spawn AW_fnc_helicopterGuns;}, [], -99, false, true, "", "((vehicle _originalTarget) isKindOf 'Heli_Transport_01_base_F') && ((vehicle _originalTarget) getVariable ['gunLockStatus', 'UNLOCKED'] != 'LOCKED')"]; player addAction ["Unlock guns", {["Unlock"] spawn AW_fnc_helicopterGuns;}, [], -99, false, true, "", "((vehicle _originalTarget) isKindOf 'Heli_Transport_01_base_F') && ((vehicle _originalTarget) getVariable 'gunLockStatus' == 'LOCKED')"]; }; case "Lock": { _helicopter = vehicle player; [_helicopter, ["LMG_Minigun_Transport", [1]]] remoteExecCall ["removeWeaponTurret", 0, false]; [_helicopter, ["LMG_Minigun_Transport2", [2]]] remoteExecCall ["removeWeaponTurret", 0, false]; _helicopter setVariable ["gunLockStatus", "LOCKED", true]; systemChat "The guns have been locked."; }; case "Unlock": { _helicopter = vehicle player; [_helicopter, ["LMG_Minigun_Transport", [1]]] remoteExecCall ["addWeaponTurret", 0, false]; [_helicopter, ["LMG_Minigun_Transport2", [2]]] remoteExecCall ["addWeaponTurret", 0, false]; _helicopter setVariable ["gunLockStatus", "UNLOCKED", true]; systemChat "The guns have been unlocked."; }; default {["Unknown parameter."] call BIS_fnc_error;}; }; Edit class CustomPlayerActions in "/Functions/cfgfunctions.hpp" as follows: class CustomPlayerActions { file = "functions\CustomPlayerActions"; class clearVehicleInventory {}; class helicopterDoors {}; class helicopterGuns {}; class slingWeapon {}; }; Edit the pilot actions in "onPlayerRespawn.sqf" as follows: //Pilot actions: if (roleDescription player find "Pilot" > -1) then { //Despawn damaged helicopters in base: [...] //Ghost Hawk actions: ["AddAction"] spawn AW_fnc_helicopterGuns; ["Respawn"] spawn AW_fnc_helicopterDoors; };

Good Lord I sure hope my GPU fan was not as audible on TS as it was on command chat, just watching the Twitch recording now!

Was a fun mission. My first time leading a squad, I hope it was not too terrible to serve in Bravo tonight - I'm afraid my leadership was weak. I also hope that you didn't hear my keyboard too much, I apologise for that. I believe that the difficulty setting and amount of enemies was more fun during last week's mission; I think it's just more fun to have longer lasting firefights and engagements. Today was a lot more laid back engagement-wise for me (and all of Bravo squad I think). Having a platoon element was defenitely good, the downside to me personally was increased command chatter and decreased situational awareness (regarding both the strategic and the tactical situation), but I think that with more iterations the benefit of having that big picture coordinator will start to show more and more. Big issue for me was people who were not on TeamSpeak. It split the squad. Those who were on TS and just listened without talking were doing just fine (@Jenkins for example), but those who JIP'd and never joined TS were quite the problem. I used TS and not the ingame group chat for squad management, so everybody who was not on there didn't really know what was going on and what to do, especially tragic with @pepeNS who JIP'd into the vacant Bravo medic slot but as far as I know didn't join TS and thus was very difficult to coordinate with - working two chats was very taxing, working three chats - one of which is redundant for most of my players - would have been one too much. For me at least. But maybe I'm just not made to be a squad leader. Not sure if making TS presence a requirement would be the solution though, after all these missions are supposed to be less difficult to join and more public and vanilla. We also might want to consider mixing the more experienced players with the less tactical ones to even the squads out a bit.

Praise the dark mode!

I can reassure the reader that I have not yet sucked or ripped off any parts of my system, neither with a vacuum cleaner nor with a normal non-microfiber duster. However, as always when beloved PC components are being worked on, proceeding with cautiousness, carefulness, precision and patience is strongly advised. Recommended steps include, but are not limited to: a) Shut the system down, turn the PSU off and disconnect the power cord as well as all periphery cables. b) Move the system to a clean, dry, well-lit and open space. c) Open and / or disassemble the system as needed. d) Clean the system and its components. e) Reassemble the system as necessary. f) Close the system, move it back to its original place and reconnect cables. Turn the PSU back on. Warning: Do not use moist or wet cleaning solutions on any components other than the case and fan blades! Do not bend or otherwise forcefully dislocate system components or parts of components! Do not exert pressure or force on system components or parts of components! For environmental, system safety and warranty reasons, it is not recommended to use products commonly labeled as "canned air" in the cleaning process, as these products contain potent greenhouse gases and may liquify after being sprayed under certain circumstances.

I don't even want to know what the inside of your PC looks like if it's reasonable to consider vacuum cleaning its mainboard ?? Only things I ever have to clean are intakes, dust filters, fans and horizontal surfaces like the top of my PSU and GPU...

That wasn't really the point @GhostDragon; I suggest a vacuum cleaner, a duster and a screwdriver. That's what I use.

Please do not use canned air, it actually contains some of the most potent greenhouse gases, far worse than CO2.

You got some parts yet @TLPerror?