Development Logs.
May 15, 2002: Third Multiplayers mission Heya..
February 3, 2002: Preparing the Third custom multiplayer mission. Ah!
January 14, 2002: Preparing the second multiplayer mission. This last week has been spent studying what to do after the release of the Extraction at Base Camp multiplayer mission. The first feedback are good, and there is still much to explore in the realm of Hamburger Hill like mission. So after some thoughts, I have started working on a new multiplayer mission whose name will be Artillery Support.
January 1, 2002: Multiplayer Missions The default team multiplayer modes that are provided with GhostRecon are Last Man, Hamburger Hill and Search and Rescue (SAR).
It's been a while. I have been kept busy with the site as a whole, setting up a forum, working on the Stat tools for our CS server Gloupide, and playing both Ghostrecon, CounterStrike and Dungeon Siege. In the meantime, I slowly worked on my next custom multiplayers missions series. As I was mentionning earlier, I wanted to work on a game goal to control at the same time separate spot, and get victory as soon as this was achieved. After more thinking and testing, I have decided to go for Farm and Embassy instead of Castle.
Embassy is one of the favorite map around, and it was a good thing to have it in one PDL mission. Furthermore, it's layout was matching the need of such multiplayer mission: In PDL CS06 Embassy, a US Rangers team is airlifted to the roof of embassy and must secure two different zones of the maps (one in the bank, the other is the consulate - inside the building near the statue - phone ringing indicates where to the zones nned to be secured) If the US rangers control these two points at the same time during the game, they have won. Once they have secured it, it stay secured even if no US Rangers stays around, until a member of the other team(s) reach the secured zone. The other team(s) win if they prevent them to secure both sites before the end of the game. US Rangers respawn in the embassy, and have set up some surprise for the Militias: they have mined embassy entrances so that nobody can get in the compound and mess with them while they regroup. Militia teams respawn randomly in the city. It is early morning, in a city deserted after intense bombardment, and it is very foggy. But as usual, fog is slowly clearing. As the command map doesn't display ennemy location wihin 40 meters, the settings are favorable to close encounter, surprise attacks, and sneak approaches (while the fog lasts).
Farm has now both a night version and a day version (with Desert Siege), and I worked this mission for both of them. Farm settings is ideal for this type of mission. The HQ is at the Farm itself, and the US Rangers have reached it with a Tank, an APC and a jeep. The two sites to secure are the barn and the crash site. The APC will help clear the way to the barn, while the tank stand watch on the farm. Guerillas soldiers are all the other teams, and to win they must prevent the Rangers from controlling the two zones at the same time. They don't have any weapon able to take out the armored vehicles, nor they have any radar positionning the enemy, even when he is close, while the rangers uses the best technology, and can spot ennemies on the command map. Last, but not the least, the farm entrances are mined, allowing the US Rangers to respawn and regroup inside the farm itself.
I wish to thanks the Sealz team for their playtest, and using their server to do so. Their feedback was welcome and useful. By the way, they are using the mod grm4, and after trying it myself, I strongly recommend it! This is great work, nice skins, and realistic weapon ballistic...
See ya for the next missions...
it took me some time to fine tune the Artillery support mission, and I think I pinned down the last bugs. Now, both Choppers Extraction and Artillery Support are working on the model I wanted: Win the game after holding the zone for a specific amount of time in a row,
The nice thing is the set of parameters that can be easily changed (See the readme instructions). Artillery support features cool explosions that are randomized around the village. Attacker will have a hard time going through to take the village back from the defenders!!
I want to thanks Hoagart, that helped me to debug the thing, and also thank all the people that got in touch with me to send me their feedback and comments about my missions. It really helps.
So my third custom MP mission will be in the castle. This time, the goal will be to control 3 different places inside the castle, and hold them all at the same time. It's a kind of mission that won't work well with less than 3 players per team, of course, but Ithink the scripting is challenging, and the castle will be well suited for this kind of objective. Beware the snipers on the walls! Run fast and crouch low!
I have chosen the Battlefield map. It is one of my favorite maps, it has a very good atmosphere on it, and is suited for a balanced multiplayer game... Like extraction at base camp, the goal will be to hold the zone for 3 minutes in a row to win. But with a twist: you need to get to the center of the zone (encompassing all the village) to become the Kings! And once there, you will get the benefit of artillery fire to help you protect the surrounding of the village. You will be able to sit in the buildings, while your ennemies will have to go across artillery fire to get to you... Well, that won't be that easy, but artillery should help! Again, I will recommend respawn as it doesn't affect too much the realism of the mission, and I moved all the respawn points away from the center of the map. By the way, the church is a landmark for artillery, and is underfire. You don't want to keep it!
In this mission, the tricky thing was to randomize artillery fire around the spot. Igor allows you to do that by using the Random function. Basically, you set a variable, populate it with a random value, then you use the redirect function to call the appropriate effect block. Of course you need to create enough special effects to make it random enough, so I have 30 impact points all around the village (mainly in already existing shell holes). Igor duplication function being very poor, I spent a lot of time doing the same thing for this part!
The other challenge were the effects themselves. I spent some time to find the appropriate timing and sequence of effect, and I'm still tweaking the last Effects parameters to this end. Well, you can hear the shells fall before they explode. And you don't want to be in the shell holes around the village when you attack. From Cynical Saint and his Real War mission, I discovered the boom effect (consolecommand "boom" to trigger a ground shaking effect on the map). I'm still looking at it's potential and limitations to decide if I will use it or not...
The mission description is the following: "You need to seize the village of Zebrinsky and defend it against superior enemy forces. Your company radio has been hit, and it's battery is out of order. A Scout has reported a destroyed humvee in the village, and you want to use it's battery to re-establish contact, radio in your position and request artillery fire from your support company.
Twenty seconds after the communication is established, your support company will provide artillery fire around Zebrinsky, to help you keep enemies at bay. Your company must hold the village during 3 minutes, and you must not allow any ennemy near the remains of the Humvee during that time. Good luck!"
Last Man is the most common mode, and is most often associated with the use of the threat indicator, a feature that some of the community member find unrealistic. In term of game term, though, the threat indicator do fit well in the Last Man type missions. Some of the maps in GR are huge, and running around with no clues of the whereabout of the opponents *is* tedious. I won't do much talking on the Last Man mission type. To me they are not giving the full potential of what GR can be in multi-player: Team work, and tense firefights because there is no other objectives than just stumbling on the ennemy and kill him.
My first interest has been the Hamburger Hill (HH) scenario type. In this mode, there is a central area in the map that must be controlled by a team. At the end of the game, the team that occupied this spot the most is the winner. This is a great multiplayer setting, with a lot of potential. Unhappily, the design of this mission has not been really given much attention. Of the 20 maps available in the retail version of GR, 15 have been done for campaign mission mainly, and the HH zone is found most often in an open area that is very difficult to protect. When you play, the zone appears as a cloud of smoke, that offer no cover against ennemy fire. When a member of your company step into the HH zone (which is not usually very large), your company becomes the king and start scoring points. When you step out of the HH zone, your company stop scoring. As a team, you can then try to get in position to prevent other teams members to reach this spot. This can offer challenging game play, but is difficult to achieve. There are some problems here: The team don't know how much time they scored on the HH zone, and it is thus difficult to assess who is going to win and what needs to be done. Second, the position are not necessarily suited for good defense. The players that tries to hold it, or even to pass through it to score for their team, are easy targets for the other teams. As it's name suggest Hamburger Hill scenario should be about defending a position that provides some advantages for the team that manages to seize it.
So I decided to work on the scripting of an Hamburger Hill mission, and my first mission that provides a better Hamburger Hill experience is named : Extraction at Base Camp.
Up to four team compete to reach and control the Tent Base Camp on the MP01-Caves map to be extracted with choppers. As for standard HH, the one team that stays in it the longer will win, but the zone encompass all the tent camp and is easier to defend. Furthermore, if any team manages to keep the camp for 3 minutes in a row, the team is considered successfully evacuated from the combat zone and wins the game.
You can download it from the download menu, and the installation information is provided on the download page.
Anyway, your feedback will be welcome about this Hamburger Hill attempt.
Bye.
PDL Northpal.