PMC Mission Development

ArmA 3 editing; configs, modeling, missions, textures, terrain etc.

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Snake Man
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PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2018-09-16 14:05:12

This topic is about PMC mission development which is basically campaigns and multiplayer missions.

I have been editing arma3 missions quite heavily already earlier 2018 so this is nothing new, just decided to start writing this stuff down today

2018-08-27 I started to play PMC Powder Bat campaign and soon after begin editing it to make changes according to my own todo list. After few edits I played some more and had a great time, this continued for several days. Huge amount of changes were made and they were committed to github arma3 PMC Campaigns.

When I got all basic issues sorted I added tanoa missions, then after more playtesting and edits I started to add the missions for altis which were missing since the campaign only covered small portion of the terrain.

Also I investigated how to make chapters to campaign description.ext and those "hub missions" known from bis east wind campaign, added three forward operating bases to altis, with ammo boxes savestatus, all which were hubs with patrol and defense missions. Creating the standard missions to cover whole altis actually was quite big task, it took me like 4 or so days straight, every day 16hrs a day editing to get them done. I was really satisfied to get them finally done.

Video footage of PMC Powder Bat Campaign v0.3.8 Development 2018-09-10.

2018-09-16 decided to port all my OFP SQS scripts into arma1-arma3 SQF format.

Its been long time coming but now is time to get rid of that ugly sqs spaghetti as we call it. I must say I'm kind of ashamed that many of PMC missions still contain sqs from ofp era. The bulk of our sqs scripts are cutscene "movie.sqs" and not any game play critical scripts. I have been writing sqf scripts since arma1 so any sqs left in our missions is that ofp stuff.

There were about 1000 sqs scripts in my campaign/multiplayer missions dirs. On the first day of sqs porting I got roughly 350 scripts ported or sorted (I managed to just delete some as they were obsolete).

I'm really liking the mission editing in arma3 overall now, eden mission editor is pretty cool and I managed to run arma3 in PMC DevSurf machine (GTX 1060 3gb) with 4k resolution window mode. I'm using "standard" video options preset with all the useless fluff disabled or very low, arma3 runs decently, surprisingly good actually. Its very enjoyable to edit missions as compared to previously when I ran arma3 on 1080p window mode heh.

Hopefully more mission development posts can be made for this topic, it would be cool to read them years later.
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2018-09-17 06:06:21

2018-09-17 alright Campaigns_PMC, Campaigns_VTE and MP PMC and VTE missions are sqs to sqf ported now.

Campaigns_VTE, MPMissions_PMC and MPMissions_VTE.

Still 137 sqs scripts to port, although that list does include the bad offenders, Bagels Tour of Duty and Unscripted War which has been for years "un-portable" due the sheer sqs spaghetti size. Killswitch knows what I'm talking about ;)

Then as a bonus I finished porting The Taxman by Ebud, that old great mission is finally in VTE fully ported to sqf!

I am very surprised that this project finished so soon, I was fully expecting on hammering these pesky sqs scripts for couple of weeks at least, heh great to have stuff done in no time :)
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2018-09-17 08:17:04

I wrote this down earlier as you can see from the dates, but "didn't have time" to post before now heh ;)

2018-09-14

Did some work on Dynamic CE (CoC Command Engine) campaign, but unfortunately porting it would require more work than just making brand new campaign from just memories what the original was.

That SQS spaghetti is so bad with the gotos that nobody should have to endure such horror. Now that arma3 shows undefined variables, it was interesting to see how broken the original OFP version was heh.

But yeah quite bummed out that porting it wont be possible (well within reason at least). Going to end up just remaking most of the sqs spaghetti with todays tech and it definitely wont play exactly the same as in the good old days in OFP.

2018-09-15

Last night I overhauled Dynamic CE campaign, it wasnt working previously, now it is. Had to scrap the war and unit movement scripts as they were just way too old tech, replaced them with something new and still random generation. Now it just needs game play testing which of course takes its time, its a long mission campaign so there is no quick tests to be done.
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2018-09-20 01:03:13

2018-09-19

Play tested PMC Powder Bat and noticed some flaws in it, started from a "campaign hub" Forward Operating Base and went onto a patrol in the nearby areas, well I could hardly see anyone, I played almost an hour and ran into two (2) groups even though I tried to visit some populated places. It was strange as the mission still had 150 bad guys in it, was thinking that yeah this needs like 500+ units with dynamic simulation :)

Ammo box fixes for the hub/FOB's, forgot to add them to all missions as there are so many (three hubs and three missions per hub). Also the players truck was missing on couple of them. Some of the hub missions had no defense units present due wrong gamelogic used, oops fixed heh.

Externalized all the saveStatus and loadStatus for ammo boxes so I dont have to edit millions of init.sqf files when doing changes for them, no changes can be seen in-game while playing but oh so much better editing setup now. Couple of hub's needed some ammo uniform box initialization to give more goodies for player to use.

Added kill counter for hub patrol missions which hopefully be nice to show progress or achievement for the player. Defense missions bumped the 50 bad guys to 100 as it was so easy to kill them off previously, I did it twice without breaking a sweat, just used M14 DMR from the guard tower and sniped the bugger eaters off, left hardly anything for the rest of my squad which was located in center of the FOB heh.

Overall did some work on the background scripts which wont show any change in-game. It was a good day of mission editing.
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2018-09-21 00:52:06

2018-09-20

PMC Powder Bat is really growing (hell it already grew) to be a great campaign with the amount of missions and campaign hubs, the latest scripting tech etc. What I'm really hoping that kind of being worried, that I can have altis, stratis and tanoa terrains in the next game engine, because there is so much to play on this campaign that it would be a shame to leave it behind. But we have all the terrains in-game now since OFP so guess there is nothing to worry about the future, we'll get the terrains.

Today I added new empty ammo boxes for players use, totally empty so its up to player how he stores stuff in them. Adding them to all those altis missions was a real pain, so many missions so much copy pasting and aligning boxes to the ground hehe.

Placed two new ammo boxes to all three FOB missions which are using in about 30 missions, so 3 x 30 == 90 missions, uuh. I really need to externalize those FOB objects into scripts so I can tweak them in one location which then gets used in all of the missions, it is just crazy to edit so many missions which basically have duplicated objects in every mission.

Wanted to play test these new edits, well basically the altis chapter of this campaign today but ran out of time. I asked around in PMC discord if anyone wants to play test it but as usual nobody replied.
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2019-12-02 16:57:09

2019-12-01

PMC discontinued all altis MP missions due this terrain being downscale version of the real thing, we don't do downscale garbage. PMC Powder Bat still remains as is because it also has missions in other terrains it would be too drastic statement to kill off whole campaign.
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2019-12-11 06:49:02

2019-12-10

Finished testing all multiplayer missions.

Started windows dedicated server on PMC Gaming computer and arma3, then joined the server and systematically started each mission while checking out everything in the mission selection, role assignment, briefing and finally when the mission is running. If there was any errors or issues, even ideas that came to my mind, I wrote them down to my issue website.

Went through all CUP terrain, PMC OFP Terrain and VTE terrain missions. Not sure of the exact count but I think it was like 340 multiplayer missions in total.

Funny thing is that now I have the LIST of what needs to be fixed... next comes the fixing part. It took me like 4 days to do the list, wonder how long it takes to actually edit the missions :o
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2019-12-17 23:24:21

2019-12-17

It was a long day of mission editing. Mainly did respawn="group" change to BASE, had no idea its going to take this long time to fix such simple thing. Yeah sure it would have taken all 3 seconds to just mass change that group to base with powergrep, but the whole process also involves adding the respawn_west marker and usually more playable slots as well.

For tomorrow I still have dozens of PMC missions and when all of those are done... then I got to do all the VTE missions, heh oh man.

Was just thinking today that once I get all the missions properly ported, next game engine version most likely will be released and then its another insane process to port missions for that haha. Oh well I'm going to probably code some tool to handle mission porting because I really do not look forward to port such loads of missions ever again, especially as its quite routine which we could teach automated software to do, at least to a some degree. Anyways.

Didn't play any arma3 today, well other than launched couple of missions in PMC DevSurf mission editor. Hopefully I get some multiplayer time tomorrow or soon after.
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Snake Man
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2019-12-19 07:36:07

2019-12-18

Finished all "PMC" campaigns and multiplayer missions respawn changes from group to base. Now still got VTE campaigns and missions left.

Yeah respawn property has no meaning in campaigns but why keep the useless line there, so I'll fix those.

I must say its been tedious job, yesterday spent ALL DAY doing that and today been working on it for several hours already.

Later in the day started working on briefing tasks, "objStatus" that dates back to OFP times, it is a huge task to fix all those tasks and I'm thinking should I try to code a C++ tool that ports these objStatus lines into sqf automatically which I'm sure wont be easy... dunno, it just might be that writing fully functioning tool like that would take the same time than actually doing this manually one by one.

One thing is for certain... when the next game engine is released and we are facing another mission porting task, I sure as hell wont do it manually anymore I've had my share of this kind of editing hehe.
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Snake Man
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Posts: 9338
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2019-12-27 15:19:21

2019-12-26

PMC Powder Bat campaign porting from fake bis terrains to real world data greece terrains. Today I restored from backup all the altis missions, loaded them up one by one in mission editor and screenshotted the locations. Now I can accurately place them into the new real greece lemnos terrain without guessing where is this location and where was that gamelogic etc.

This kind of work just proves how huge project it is, I took couple of days to consider if I should begin doing this and I wasn't wrong, this ain't no joke, its insane amount of work to get even the basic porting done not to mention add any sort of details to both of the terrains.

But project will get done, I want to be playing this campaign on real world data terrains.
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"ALPHA BLACK TO PAPA BEAR. ALL RUSSIANS ARE TOAST. OVER."

Snake Man
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Posts: 9338
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2020-04-27 05:08:01

2019-12-31

PMC Powder Bat tweaked few task locations which were put on wrong spot.
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Snake Man
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Posts: 9338
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Re: PMC Mission Development

Post by Snake Man » 2022-06-17 08:35:01

2022-06-17T08:32:00Z

Edited some PMC multiplayer missions, this was part of my on-going project to exterminate stringtable.csv file from all missions and campaigns.

Here is the list of missions I edited:

Code: Select all

- airbase combat
- airfield raid
- ambush.abel
- ambush_2.abel
- anti air
- armoured
- assaultgun
- citycombat
- colonel hunt
- defend castle
- defend meaux
- desert tanks
- downtown la riviere
- escape
- evac
- fierce eagle
- gunship assault
- hill
- hold city
- hostagerescue
- hostile sea
- infantry fight jam
- jam city
- nato convoy
- night raid
- ninjas
- op liberty
- pow camp
- road block
- saints and sinners
- seal strike
- search and rescue
- pmc_search_and_rescue2.noe
- pmc_search_and_rescue2_enchanced.noe
- shittysember
- shootout
- sniper alley
- sniper hunt 2
- strike eagle chernarus
- strike eagle
- the captive
- valley escape
Amazingly my copy-paste finger is not completely out of the fight, yet.
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