Coop Compound V1

[davros]

G'day all.

After many weeks of development, it's finally time to release this mission and let loose the dogs of war.

Fistly though, I'd like to thank the Beta testers who steped up to help me shape this. In particular Viper and the guys at AGB (A Gaming Brotherhood) for their tireless testing of beta version after beta version of this mission. You guys are the reason I persisted this long! Sounds like an award ceremony, but you guys know I mean it. Thanks.

I have called this version 1 because it is my first attempt at a mission and I and expect that there will be changes/fixes/updates over time.

I do not expect that is will cover all ways people like to play GR:AW but I have tried to at least consider them in making the mission. I am still learning about all this so please, if you play this map, provide feedback in this thread and encourage other players in your teams to do so....Be kind and constructive as, unless you have created a mission like this yourself, you really have no idea how darn hard GRIN have made it

ORG Coop Compound V1

Intel. is that the Mexicans are readying a staging area for a mass attack. It's a natural basin and the only ways in are by air or a tightly held tunnel system. Command have ruled out a land attack and previous attacks by air have been met with heavy resistance from ADATS. Sadly, our artillery is too far away and time is running out so your team are the best hope to deny the enemy this advantage.

Using local guides, your team has found it's way through a maze of disused tunnels to an old quarry.

Your mission is to infiltrate the enemy base and take out BOTH the ADATS as quietly as possible. Avoid engaging the enemy before this or risk them calling in punuishing air support as well as reinforcements via chopper.

Features of this map (V1) are...

* Created for 1 - 6+ players.

* Stealth/coordinated attack on ADATS is rewarded - but noisy can be more fun!

* Multiple heli-drops of enemies and attack choppers if you alert the bad guys early.

* NEW! 7 Player controlled spawn points - stand @ a specific point (power transformer set on walls) for 5 seconds and it will reset spawn to there. You control where the spawn is.

* pseudo-randomised positioning of selected enemy and events for increased replay.

* Enemy are wearing balistic vests, so may take more than one shot in the body to put them down.

* 2 Zeus's at 8 possible locations.

Extraction : All team members must be on the heli-pad for 3 seconds for game to end. Note you can not enter the heli.

--------------------------------

Sadly, I must admit that there were some errors reported by the testers that I was unable to replicate and so can not confirm a fix for. I am unable to re-create these errors on my own server (dedicated LAN server or as a stand alone or LAN game) - that is to say, the game runs perfectly for me on my servers in the various modes in GRAW2. The issues have been experienced by Viper's team when running on his hosted web server (not that I am suggesting it's the issue).

I would be very happy if someone else could replicate them on their local server and even better take on the challenge of resolving them and releasing a V2 to the community so we can all learn. Just PM me if you can replicate the error locally and reliably and decide to try and release a fix.

So apologies in advance if you get a crash/bugs when playing on a dedicated (internet hosted) server as it seems there are differences in the way this runs vs. a LAN or solo. The mission does work on my LAN and my LAN dedicated server as well as on a lan game at a friends house...so I give up as to why it misbehaves on a web hosted server. Hopefully it will also work fine for you.

The known issues encountered by Viper/beta testers and others here are as follows...

1) The extraction blackhawk has been reported to go up and down on some players screens. Again, I have not been able to recreate this - but have seen the screen dumps - wierd.

2) The game occasionally crashes with an unhandled exception - access violation relating to smovelogics.dsf/aihivebrain.dsf.

3) The game occasionally crashes complaining about a weapon...can't recall the exact error, but again a GRAW2 issue..not a mission issue.

4) Occasional inactive AI...just stand there as though you are invisible or wall hack - appears to be server related. Can not see any logic or reason for it.

Cheers,

Dav.

Edited September 11, 2008 by davros

[Rocky]

Added to DOWNLOADS.

[Rocky]

Hey I love this mission! Great job, keep it up!

[davros]

Hey I love this mission! Great job, keep it up!

Thanks for the kind words Rocky. When you get time to play it through, would appreciate your thoughts on it so I can integrate learnings for the next one....once I recover enough sanity that is

Dav.

[Rocky]

Played it to completion with 7 other guys on the sparta server tonight. Only crashed once, so no major worries there.

Not sure how the extract is meant to conclude, the heli came in (very cool BTW), but we had a issue or 3 trying to get into it, I don't think it's built for 8 lol.

Thanks.

[Viper714]

Have the last three guys hang from the landing gear!!! Really glad you liked the map. We really enjoy playing it. Love the selectable spawn points. More maps need this feature especially on DAM and LAGOON!!!

Viper

[davros]

Thanks for the post Rocky. Glad you enjoyed playing it.

I should have explained that because of the issues with the blackhawk crasing, I have set the mission up to end when all players are on the helipad for about 3 seconds.

The second blackhawk heli. is the excort heli and just does loops firing (and tagging) the bad guys....while they fire RPG's at it

Will update my post above with this info. so other know how to end the game.

I also played it on a LAN with some mates last night and weird thing is in one of the 3 games we got non-responsive ai - but only some ai - so I played it using my PC as the lan server (while playing) and all was ok...weird...ahh well, such is life.

thanks again.

[davros]

I guess 300+ downloads (incl. filefront) and 2 people posting is a good thing...

Be keen to understand what people think of the map though...so if you do play it, pls. post thoughts here. Good or bad.

Dav.

[Rocky]

Yeh, when the circling heli started taking RPG round we were all on the heli pad saying "######, who's shooting???!!!" LOL.

I liked the map, it had a lot of options for going high, staying low, and even going underground. The bushes were giving the bad guys plenty of opportunity to snipe at us, which took a bit of time to figure out, and there was plenty of eye cany, generators and heli pad etc. All very impressive.

The scripting was great too, the spawn point system, the mission updates, the helicopter drop offs, really good stuff.

[JJUK]

trying to dl but the link takes me to gr.net dls and then to fuilefront main site ??

[Tinker]

TEMPORARY LINK

[Rocky]

Link fixed, dunno why it went AWOL like that.

[davros]

Ummm my bad. I removed it from my filefront profile...

Sorry...did not realise the link in GR.net downloads was pointing to my profile and not Rocky's

Dumb. Thanks Tinker and Rock for covering for me.

Hopefully all good now.

Dav

[JJUK]

Nice map got to the second mule up high going left out first spawn when i changed kits its crashed

ash in application version: 30899.3048

data\lib\units\extensions\inventory.dsf(-1): cant find member: player_data in type <Unit>

Renderer: threaded

Physics : threaded

[davros]

Thanks, that would have been annoying! I have heard of this error and from the ubi forums it like a "standard" graw error and has been happening for some time with stock maps as well as custom. No fix for this. We got it a few times on lan games with other maps, and now try and avoid the mules (and changing rate of fire - z) for this reason.

Thanks for posting though. Perhaps try it again and see if it does the same thing?

Dav.

[AJ59]

Excellent map.

A bit tough playing Lone Wolf.. but that's expected.

I do have a lot of lag after I blow the first ADAT.

I guess my ATI HD3850, A64 X2 4400 with 2GB RAM isn't good enough.

[Rpghard]

Good map for first attemp,

But for me who has similar gear has AJ59 it lag for the first 30 min and this is caused by the amount of helis sometimes 4 at the same time...this is a bit to much for the game I tough that 2 helis at the same time was a lot(see in coop_arroyo) and when I tried your map lololol....and the other thing who caused lag is the AI that is offen running to a roc like they are blocked because they have no path so they act ######...the Ai is useless in this map because of the lag they need more cpu memory to move and shoot at you at least 15fps that's what I get when I play everything on high at the begening of coop_base13,and if you try for example coop_castle_day which has no vehicule on it and few enemies well the AI are blazing at 40fps ...I suggest you use Xfire or fraps for the fps count during testing...

[davros]

Thanks RPGhard and AJ59.

I must admit that I designed it on a high spec PC...will need to test on some older equipment next time! (Have a E8400 o/c @ 4Ghz, 4Gig DDR2 o/c to @ 1200Mhz and an o/c 8800GTS....I fdo love my toys...I did also test it on my Q6600 @ stock with an Nvidia 8600 Silent...and that's a relatively slow rig and it ran fine.

Will have to break out the old AMD 3700+ and 7900GT to test next time (was hard core o/c'd in it's day...ahhh those were the days).

Note that there is a HUGE difference running it locally compared to over a LAN of from a web hosted server.

AJ59, Thanks for the comment about the lag after blowing the ADAT. Interestingly nothing actually happens immediately in the script when you blow the first ADAT that could cause lag...other than in the next 30 seconds or so, the script starts up the first heli. So no reason for lag on blowing other than the composition of the actual explosion....interesting.

Re. lag...I can easily tune the number of (concurrent) heli's - I originally had 4+...and reduce the number and groupings of AI to reduce lag/increase frame rates.

I'll do this and re-test as V2...would you guys like to help me test these changes?

Dav.

Edited September 18, 2008 by davros

[AJ59]

4 gigs of RAM? That must be sweet. I'll be getting a A64 6000+ soon, but won't upgrade the vid card for a while.

If you do test it on your "old" rig, might only try with 2GB of RAM like most of us "common" folk use!

I did have lag before blowing the first ADAT in one attempt because I spent a lot of time trying to shot down the helo's with RPG's or grenade launcher.

It is definately the helo's causing the lag.

And yes, I would like to test it when I have time.

[davros]

Thanks....yeah, I do love my toys, one of the advantages of getting old...you can afford better toys

Anyway, back to the mission...will have a play with it on the w/e and see what I can do to tone it down a bit and will see if I can test on the old rig with 2Gig ram. And will PM you when it's ready to test.

re. RAM, can only use 3Gig 'cos of XP limitiations...but yeah, it's good. To be honest though, the processor makes the most difference. The core 2's overclock so well -I'd recomend you consider them over ther AMD's. This one is 3GHz stock and it runs all day every day at 4GHz stable as a rock under any test. Good solid ram (and a good HSF) is the key to a good o/c...it does not need to be expensive ram, just have plenty of headroom so you can crank up the FSB and not reach it's limit.

Cheers,

Dav

[Twix]

Hi Folks ..

Is there any News on Version 2.0 of this map?

Maybe you want to make a Open-beta-testing,

and upload the last state of the map because i

didn always have the time to play online ..

.. Greets .. Twix ..

P.s. my System is just as AJ59 System

(4400 / 2 Gigs / 9800 GTX+)

Edited September 23, 2008 by Twix

[davros]

Have not done anything on this as yet....not a cracker. Bad Dav...Bad! Hope to soon...

Needed a break from the whole thing...though I did have a chance to observe the rather shocking memory leak in the dedicated server (a known fault)...wow, what a shocker! Mem. utilisation went from 300Meg to 1Gig in under half an hour and then drew back to 700Meg. - was page faulting like crazy too. It also caused a crash after about 30 min's (out of memory error) when I just started a game and left my Ghost sitting at the spawn point...I wish GRIN were still supporting this game - much of these faults would be easy to fix.

Thanks for the idea about an open release, but I'd rather have a known, closed set of testers and then release it - limits the confusion about who's running what version in the wild.

Happy for you to be one of the closed testers.

Dav.

[davros]

Have not done anything on this as yet....not a cracker. Bad Dav...Bad! Hope to soon...

Ok, took an hour or two last night to fire up the "old" AMD 3700+ (2.2Ghz, with 2Gig mem, 8800GTS on 22" @ 1920x1050) and run the mission as a local coop game (ie. on the PC as opposed to from a dedicated server).

I opened the map in the editor on this PC and it lags in the editor as well...when just showing the map (static objects). So I suspect that the map is at the edge of complexity for this PC's power.

Note that the reason I upgraded from PC was that it was unable to play some of the more recent maps from Rpghard...lagged at 2-3 frames/sec. (regardless of resolution) and at times would not even load the maps. So, I figure if it can load and play my mission, (even at a crappy 20FPS), it should be ok for most of you at well above 20FPS.

So, loaded up V1 of the mission and...

yep, lagged like a laggy thing (FRAPS showed it started at ~20 FPS and went down to 11 with mutiple heli's on screen). Interestingly the AI was also slow to react to me (even if the choppers were not in the game) but not totally unresponsive as I have seen in some dedicated server games - the AI eventually saw me and then slowly reacted - but it was like they were two or three seconds behind my movement...I could run in circles around them. Seems that there were not enough CPU cycles to refresh their "threat detection"/action.

So, I changed a few things - removed the choppers, removed the player activated spawn points, changed a few of the trigger points from boxes to squares, altered the frequency and positioning of the trigger checks...and re-ran. It was much smoother...at worst the FPS was 16, but it was the way the AI reacted that was most noticable...they were more alert to my presence. Interestingly, it did not lag with the escort heli. and the extraction heli on screen... (still 20FPS).

Next steps are to :

1) change the timing of the heli's so that there is only one on screen at a time (incl. the attack heli).

2) reduce the sqads to 2-3 max. incl. those dropped by heli's (Have a couple that are 4)

3) remove a few sqads to reduce the overall number on map (will also reduce due to slower heli drops and reduced number in heli's)

4) will see if 1 blackhawk at the end makes a diff...be a shame to lose the escort chopper.

5) will run it as a dedicated server from this old PC and see if it can keep up.

Then, publish V2 as a "toned down" version for Beta testing. All other elements of the mission will be the same.

Pls. keep posting any changes you'd like to see or problems so i can include in this release.

Dav

Edited September 27, 2008 by davros

[AJ59]

I really liked those changeable spawn points. It makes them sorta like mini-objectives. If you can run fast enough to the point and stand there without dying, the reward is spawning closer to the objective.

But if removing them will speed up the game a bit, then it's probably best to take them out.

I did manage, when playing V1 yesterday at "normal" setting (with most video settings turned down from the "high" my vid card supports) to actually destroy both ADATs. Takes a lot of running away!

But darned if the game didn't crash on me after about 45 min. Something about a "hive". I didn't bother saving the log.

I do have to say that this map and mission is awesome. You have done a fine job.

I'll be installing my A64 X2 6000+ very soon and hope it will run a lot smoother. Maybe the vid card too if the prices on the 4750's come down a bit more.

Keep up the good work.

I love firing a grenade into those troop choppers. They blow sooooo nicely!

AJ

[davros]

Thanks for the support AJ....seems it's the processor speed that's the issue more than the graphics card. GRAW appears to be very processor intensive.

It will run fine on my 7900GT as long as it's on a fast CPU.

As for the hive error, year, I get that occasionally...VERY frustrating. I suspect it's related to graw not being able to manage large numbers of enemy over time - poor housekeeping in the code...hence I may reduce the numbers of enemy.

I have made all the above chages and it's able to run ok on my AMD 3700+ with 2Gig DDR400 memory and my old 7900GT. Frame rates are still very low, but playable. So that's a good start. Game still plays reasonably well - but the AI are not as quick to respond as I would like.

Still have to do some more changes/testing to see what's causing the slowness...will remove everything and start with just the base map and work up from there to see what causes it to slow...options are the map, the script, the enemy, the heli's.

Thanks again to all those who are taking the time to post.

Dav.

Edited September 28, 2008 by davros