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ARMA Generic Dynamic Campaign Engine (v 1.02)
   
No picture found for this addon. Author : shinden Version : 1.02  
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Description :
ARMA GDCE 1.02 by shinden


First off and most important, straight from the original GDCE player guide:


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7. FINISHING WORDS
Many thanks to the following people (some people use lowercase names):

tacrod (DMA) – for even creating CoIn. Without it, the OFP dynamic campaign world
would be far more underdeveloped, or even nonexistent. And also for his great help about SoW
saving.

Sanctuary (DMA) – for developing the DMA Dynamic War Template , which was my
first (and very good) guide into OFP scripting. I surely wouldn’t even think about scripting if I
wouldn’t come across the DMA template.

Silola (Mapfact) – for making DAC, which is a great software for heating up the
atmosphere in missions. I hope, in future versions of DAC and OFP (ArmA) the possibilities will
be even greater.

snYpir – for using his great functions: distanceToPos, DirToPos and some others
rune (Sinews of War) – for making the great saving functions. these functions avoided the CTDs and they made able the carrying of data from one phase to the other.

honchoblack, Q, colligpip, and many other people on the BIS Forums, who helped with
their experience, during the development of GDCE (and VTD before).

And of course to Bohemia Interactive for developing Operation Flashpoint.
If I forgot someone forgive me and PM me at the BIS Forums.
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also

MrN, the converter and author of Dynamic War for ARMA who's conversion inspired this one and who's work helped quite a bit with ARMA GDCE

and to the person who built GDCE...kutya...may this be a continued mark of your contribution to OFP,ARMA and whatever else BIS ever does, as this program, hopefully, gets converted again and again. consider it a tribute to your hard work, and honestly I hope you enjoy playing this more than you enjoyed building it. I know I do!!!



GDCE isn't truly mine, it's everyones...but credit is expected and welcome where due. feel free to release your mod of the templates, as long as those listed above are in your credits, and maybe a little love for me...shinden...too.



The version 1.02 players guide:

Changelog 1.02:

-fixed support, defend and defend convoy requirements so that these missions do not take an eternity and constant hunting,
-fixed insertion helo so that players eject slowly hopefully to reduce occurance of men ejecting on top of the Rotor.
-reinsertion should function now

The TEMPLATES files are not playable, they are a template for mission makers to make it easy to adapt GDCE to campaigns, new maps and so forth.

To mission makers...I wanted to get this out there so I haven't finished my own mission maker readme yet, I provided the original GDCE pdf file to help, most of it still applies, however there are many script options available to the mission maker that I want to explain, such as the difficulty increase with value level. Right now these are scripted into the mission files (actually the spawn files) but I hope to reference these to globals and make it easy to adjust. Everything sould work the same, even the multi-phase campaign should be possible as outlined, I just haven't tested it at all. Let me know if it doesn't work. When certain add-ons are available, I want to add them as needed for GDCE, such as RKSL's c-130 and ch-47's that can carry vehicles. Let me know if there's any scripts or addons that could enhance your GDCE experience.

As a bonus, I included an alternate globals.sqs file for each side. these have some addons' classnames on them so you'll need the appropriate addons to use the alternates:

west: Johnny's marines, Skaven's RACS, 6th sense weapon pack, commando pack #1, F89 minimi elcan, and Vilas' basic weapons

east: RHS russian fed. pack, SLA weapons pack, Vilas' basic pack

The missions can be very difficult as (GDC) value goes up in vanilla ARMA GDCE, I suggest using high dispersion enemies as in Skavens RACS or modding the profile or using second's suppression scripts.




INSTALLATION: the ARMAGDCE folders (ARMAGDCEeast and west, and both templates) goes in your campaign directory. That should be it.




Known Issues:


-MOST IMPORTANT! DO NOT RESUME A GAME IF YOU HAVE RESTARTED ARMA! THIS WILL CRASH THE GAME!! always revert or start from the beginning, eventually when multi-phase campaigns are made (I'll work on one) you'll want to REVERT on the mission you are currently on. SAVE AND LOAD AT THE TENT!! The save only saves your teams' stats, time of day when saved, support and value levels...which is really all you need in any case...and the save can be loaded after exiting and restarting ARMA. During a mission you can save and continue as normal as long as you do NOT exit ARMA. I'm not sure if this is the case if you leave a mission and do something else in ARMA for 2 hours, but on the short term, normal save is usable (if sometimes unstable) while still in ARMA


-spelling errors:

these are the least of my concerns right now, I'll get around to it.

- _wp error sometimes in defense support and defense missions:

this happens if you get to 30 kills before the mission can spawn certain groups, which can happen if you prepare well. should have no bad effect, the mission is trying to create a waypoint for a group that doesn't exist. *may have been fixed before release*

-load a game doesn't give me the weapons I had when I saved it!:

GDCE had one originally, but I had to remove it because it was causing some problems after I built the new REARM option. There is a way to make it work, but since you can just REARM at the armorer anyway, I'll work on it later. I'm sure there's folks out there who love to run around with trophies, and see them when they reload, this will require some work.

-GDCE isn't counting the kills from my squadmember on a fixed MG or vehicle!:

I know about this and It needs fixing, not sure how but I have a few theories...the eventhandlers record who is killed and the killer, when your on a vehicle the vehicle is the killer...being a script newbie I'm not sure how to reference the crewman instead and haven't had time to look yet.

-My new squad member still has the same number of kills my old dead one has!:

I saw this and kept it, as this is a good gage after many missions of how effective that squadslot armament is. That squad members skill is reset to it's new low number so you know who's new and not.

-DAC isn't working...and what is it?:

DAC is Dynamic AI creator, similar to the recent Dynamic Group creator. DAC is a big program with many,many strings, codes and such to convert, it's a mission by itself and it's quite amazing. DAC is a priority and if there's an ARMA GDCE 1.01...DAC will be in it...I hope.

-*insert addon* causes error message!:

I'll troubleshoot incompatibility with addons I commonly use, one that exists for sure is with the addon version of the suppression script by second. I think what happens here is that the script is trying to adjust the skill of a soldier just killed. but it may be something else...shouldn't be a problem.



1.STARTUP: HOnestly you should read the whole thing, but things can be figured out on your own. I may toss all this into the 'survival guide' someday...



On mission start you'll see your face (the face is set in globals...I haven't actually tested this feature, but it should work, of course see the section on editing globals before you try anything) and your team will form up around you in delta formation to keep you tight. There will be a TENT, a MEDIC, a MACHINEGUNNER, an OFFICER, and a PILOT. Walking up to them, (or looking at them) will activate their options. There should also be 4 vehicles, in the west 'demo' these vehicles are 2 humvees, a m113 and a 5 ton.

A description of each:


TENT: This is the most important thing in the game for you. This is where saves and loads are done:

-REST: First, Rest causes time to pass, the time is set in GDC_globals (see relevant chapter), By default it's around 4-6 hours. So if you feel like a night mission...REST is how you get there. Rest also saves your stats which you can view in SAVED GAME STATUS. You must rest between mission due to REST's other important function, cleaning up the mess you made in missions. (note: REST doesn't clean everything, please report anything REST leaves lying around, I haven't had time to go through every group and object). REST will raise enemy support, so don't go crazy with it.

-CURRENT STATUS: The list is self-explanatory except for support and value. Support is the enemy's support level, when this number hits zero...you WIN! That's why it's damn BIG number! Value is how much you are worth. Value will be explained in more detail in the mission section as I use this number for a lot. All the numbers in current status will be in save status when you rest...assuming nothings broken.

-SAVED GAME STATUS: This is read straight out of your objects.sav file. when you load a game, these stats become your stats.

-LOAD GAME: This where you load...DO NOT RESUME A MISSION IF YOU HAVE RESTARTED ARMA!!! this will crash ARMA because of a variables bug or feature, or whatever. REVERT, go to the tent and select this option. LOAD GAME doesn't care about the makeup of your squad, so reinforce your squad before REST or LOAD if you're missing anyone.



MEDIC: He heals and reinforces your squad. he has one command

-Reinforce: heal and reinforce, around 1 hour will pass, so be aware if it's near dusk or dawn. New squadmembers will have a low random skill level...sometimes even 0...there's nothing I can do to stop you from shooting poorly skilled recruits and getting new ones...but have a heart...not his!



MACHINEGUNNER: Rearms you, this was changed from original GDCE...next to him is a ammo box which is also important.

-REARM: will open the REARM dialog box. in the beginning only 2 options will be available, normal loadout and CQB loadout 1. clicking on these buttons will equip your squad with weapons selected for that option (defined in GDC_globals). As your value rises, more options will become available and you'll still be able to pick old options per your preference


-AMMO BOX: The ammo box contains every weapon given to your squad in the currently available dialog options, so if you want the sniper's rifle (here squad member 10) you can grab it out of here. You can also grab secondary weapons, so by ordering your troops to gear up, you can load up on M136's for a convoy ambush. Other Items should be available here too, pipebombs, satchel charges, mines...may need to add some things...



OFFICER: has all your missions.

-MISSION: Randomly picks a mission. On some missions the clock will be ticking so you may want to be ready to move out before hand. Missions are described in the mission section and in your breifing. After completing the mission see the officer and click this option again to finish.

-ABORT MISSION: LOSER! just kidding, a major reason for aborting a mission can be because I screwed up and the mission won't give you a complete though you deserve one or ARMA decides to screw you over which happens. ABORT raises enemy support which can help you lose the game so be careful.



PILOT: Takes you places, actually he just stands there, some other guy flies you around...

-REQUEST INSERTION: In Sahrani, everything is far, so you'll be doing this a lot. as soon as you click, he'll ask where on the map you want to go. hit 'M' for map and scroll to the mission location or wherever makes you happy, If you would like to quickly go to the mission area, just click on the hyperlink in the briefing...then left-click where you want to go, you'll be in the chopper and the engine starting. The chopper flies a little low, so watch out for AA if your mission mentions such. The chopper will land where you point, so be careful where you click! Land on a tree or house and your squad will be alongside Carter's special forces. BE CAREFUL WITH TIME COMPRESSION! The AI chopper doesn't react well to time compression. In normal TC the AI will clear every mountain and safely make it to wherever it's going most of the time. increase it and the crashes begin. be aware of this when calling for extraction and medevacs too! I just don't use it.

2. Your Squad and gameflow

The name of this section should be called the radio, because it's the most important thing about your squad.

In ARMA the squadmembers assume a role based on the weapon they are carrying or their class. Medics and Snipers are always medics and snipers by class. Others retain their class, but may act differently depending on the weapon the are carrying.

In the demo the first 4 are riflemen or granadiers, the next 2 are AT's, the next 2 are MG's, 9 is the medic and 10 is the sniper. No I didn't use fireteam format...ARMA doesn't use it, and the only way to make it work the way it's supposed to is to have 4 seperate squads, or multiplayer.

Your squad is NOT expendable so the Medic is very important, Keep him alive. another way of healing your squad is the MEDEVAC from the radio should you lose the medic.

The RADIO: number 2 is the default RADIO guy. you must activate the radio to use it and you don't get all day. Point yourself at squadmember 2 and "use radio" should pop up in your action menu. clicking this will enable the radio. now hit 0 than 0 again to call up the radio options (you can also see the radio on the map, but this way kinda sucks.). Always know where number 2 is, the radio is important, If you hear "2 is down!" you better know where he went down at, and hope his radio didn't bite it. It's a long walk back...even longer if I get DAC working. picking up the radio yourself will enable radio options for you at all times, or one of your team can carry it, operating just like 2 did. REINFORCE should bring everything back to it's natural order.



The radio shows the following by default:

-Status: a shortened version of the TENT's status, useful for knowing whether you've met mission complete goals or not.

-Reinsert: sometimes available. allows you to be picked up and moved somewhere else.

-Medevac: needed on some missions (POW rescue) and important for getting out dead and wounded. MEDEVAC will start by asking for a map click, go to the map and click a location near your squad. when it gets close, it will ask you to drop a marker, and a marker action will be added to your action list. when you select drop marker the chopper will head toward that location and land. POWS, and dead will be loaded on (actually deleted). wounded squadmembers will be healed and the chopper will take off for home. MEDEVACing dead soldiers can be important, as this takes back some of the support the enemy gains from killing your men.

-Extraction: Like Medevac except picks you up. Extraction never actually lands, I have it teleport you on board with a black screen to hide the effect, because landing than moving you in seemed to always damage you, with sometimes bad results...not sure if this is a bug, or if I have to try something in the script, anyhow it's better this way as the extraction chopper will be able to pick you up from anywhere and you don't have to worry about the chopper landing on a tree, blowing up, and taking out the whole squad.

-OTHER SUPPORT OPTIONS: As you gain value, more options become available that directly supports you, such as calling in a SF team, airstrikes, artillery, and direct air or ground support. IT costs value to use these assets and I'm pretty rough because I've upped the value award for finishing missions, I upped the penalty for using radio support. I won't elaborate on these support options, see them for yourself. It's great watching 2 strykers with TOW's come down on parachutes...even if they are not really supposed to do that. There's also smoke so you can be shot by the enemy while blinded.



gameflow: pretty simple...go to officer get mission, go to the pilot for insertion or sardine the squad into vehicles...do mission, MEDEVAC if needed, extract or drive back, see officer for mission complete, see medic to replace dead and heal wounded, see machinegunner for weapons and ammo (or ammo box), go to tent and REST to save...start over.


3. Missions:

Missions have had quite a few tweaks from the original GDCE version, there's a 'difficulty system' (which DAC had...which isn't working) based on your value. The better you do the more troops and eventually vehicles the enemy will toss at you. There's a great variety of missions available with many different locations for most of them. Even within each mission trigger a random location is generated, making most missions different every time. By necessity, some missions are a little repetitive, such as convoy missions, which pretty much have to be on a road with no random placing for the vehicles, the enemy however can come from a variety of directions. Some missions wait for input from you to start, in ambush, support and convoy ambush, for example an action is added to your menu basically saying "I'm ready now!" so the enemy can spawn and flank around your carefully planned booby trap and shoot you in the back.

In case you have trouble I'll give an overview of the missions, these maybe spoilers, and you may want to just skip this section...

PATROL: standard stuff...get to position, mission complete than get attacked by wandering enemy patrol that flase sense of security from seeing objective complete can bite you. sometimes you'll actually see the patrol first.

AMBUSH: you'll go to a pre-determined point, and have time to set up. when you are ready, select the wait for attack option and fire when they get to your killzone...or actually fire when one of your squad prematurely ejaculates. This mission counts how many are left in the enemy groups, so if you haven't gotten mission complete, look around or wait a while...than complain.

RAID: A fun capture mission complete with surrender animation. he'll just sit there and wait for you to waste his protection...which can be formidable...get close and he should pop up with hands behind his head. you don't have to medevac him, just extract and walk away. Originally, ARMA being different from OFP, disableAI anything didn't stop the 'captured' officer from fleeing on sighting you. this would make for comical situations where I would sprint after him during testing, having to get within 5m to trigger mission complete...he would run in a crazy zigzag pattern through the woods, and I would have to sprint at full speed to catch him, while being shot at by guard survivors...If you know a little scripting, comment out the allowfleeing line in this mission's script to enjoy this.

DEFEND: This one can be tough, I plan on making this mission into an all out war eventually, with all the available vehicles taking part in higher value levels. The trigger is 30 dead bodies, which is easier later on because there is much more to kill. The mission is supposed to continually spawn enemies until you hit this number. place MG nests which appear on your action menu the click wait for attack on your action menu.

HELIDOWN: another fun one, if set correctly, you may arrive just when the enemy does causing some great missions where you must get to the pilots before the enemy kills them, some heroics maybe needed here such as sprinting across open country at considerable risk to provide supporting fire, or getting a medevac in there under fire.

MERCS: this is like patrol, except with highly skilled, highly accurate special forces

ASSASSINATE: Basically a sniper mission, though can be done with guns blazing...the same as raid, except you want the guy dead. allow fleeing is off, so if he spots you and your close, he'll run...of course you can just shoot him, but in some areas you may lose him. A well aimed sniper shot can stitch him with no contact if you think your slick.

DEMO: actually 3 different missions involving blowing something up. The trucks version is easy...the other two can be tough. I don't need to remind you what type of hamburger you become when AA guns fire at you. the other one...hopefully you got that really cool mortar addon because right now it's artillery, not mortars...spying a m119 through a pair of binoculars...and then watching it turn toward me...there isn't enough time between thinking "oh shit" and hitting 'S'.

MIA: atually 3 different missions, which one you have isn't immediatly obvious until you locate them which can be tough at night...SPOILER in one the team is dead so look for dead bodies, this can be a nightmare at certain places at night. the other is dead radio, which usually doesn't have a lot of enemies. a dead giveaway unfortunately is that the MIA squads will order their wounded to head toward your medic...probably need to disableAI "target". in normal MIA the troops are captured and under guard...they need a medevac, but be careful, I've lost one medevac chopper in one of the far away missions.

AMBUSH CONVOY: like ambush with vehicles, your elaborate trap can actually work...assuming your AT soldiers decide to fire on vehicles as opposed to some twerp who forgot to get in the vehicle...Ambush convoy counts the vehicles so if all the vehicles are alive because you shot the drivers and gunners you won't get mission complete! if you're out of at-4's there maybe some RPG's lying around from the enemies, or even one available on a ural...blow up the trucks and all should be well. (If you really have nothing to destroy the trucks with, you can always go back to HQ, REARM and then blow them up)

SUPPORT: like defense, except the enemy won't wait on you. get there FAST. A squad will be there (with vehicle at higher value levels to help them out a bit.) with machine gun nests...these are usually the first to get killed, so expect some empty nests to fill when you arrive.

DEFEND CONVOY: like support, defend your vehicles, get the enemies' AT soldiers! At higher levels, the enemy will have some vehicles to of it's own...


4. MODDING THE GLOBALS.SQS FILE

pretty much immediately you'll want to get your favorite addons to the game. GDCE provides a way to do this that allows you to put exactly what weapons to have available to you and who in your squad can carry them, as well as changing the vehicles available to you and the enemy. Globals is basically almost all of the arrays GDCE uses to generate it's objects. Certain parameters can be set here as well. The comments in the Globals should provide plenty of explanation for the values listed. some notes:

For most of the objects files (those with brackets with quotation marked items seperated by commas) you simply have to add the addon item you want to the list for example:

GDC_ConvProtN = [ "BMP2", "t72", "UAZMG", "BRDM2_ATGM", "UAZ_AGS30", "ZSU"]

and you want to add the BMD-1 addon to GDCEeast...get the BMD-1 class name and add it to the end (don't forget the quotations):

GDC_ConvProtN = [ "BMP2", "t72", "UAZMG", "BRDM2_ATGM", "UAZ_AGS30", "ZSU", "Mech_BMD"]

If you want to make one item more common than others, list it more times:

GDC_ConvProtN = [ "BMP2", "t72", "UAZMG", "BRDM2_ATGM", "UAZ_AGS30", "ZSU", "Mech_BMD", "Mech_BMD", "Mech_BMD"]

GDCE randomy loads the object in the array.

Be aware of items without brackets like:

GDC_FriendHvyMGN = "DSHKM"

or items without quotation marks:

GDC_RespawnList = [ GDC_r1, GDC_r2, GDC_r3, GDC_r4 ]

These can be edited and modified, but you must know exactly what you are doing, if you want to experiment, save a copy of globals first. These reference other scripts or the mission.sqm and these may have to be modified. you could change the type of static machinegun for example, but should be aware that this is for the sanboxed nests for defense and attack missions. so you'll need a high mount MG. you can turn it into a array as well if you know how to select it during creation.

squads: your team list is 12 members long ( I reduced the team size to 10 but kept the array at 12 incase you want to bring back the original GDCE 12, to do that you'll have to uncomment many script lines throughout ARMA GDCE). Unfortunately, this won't change YOU...you'll have to do that in the mission editor...sucks I know follow these steps if your all thumbs:

1. go into the campaign folder, than into the ARMA GDCE (east or west demo) folder than into the mission folder.

2.copy this entire folder and head to my documents\ARMA\missions and paste the ARMAGDCE mission folder in there.

3 Now you can open the mission in the mission editor...start arma, go to the editor and change the player marker to whatever makes you happy than save (don't export)...exit and recopy the folder from my documents\ARMA\missions back to where you orginally got it from. should be it.

You may also try editing the mission.sqm file...I've had crashing problems doing this, so I would make a backup before trying the 'easy' way.

weapons: You'll probably spend most of your time editing here, no it's not faster than just tossing and ammobox in the game, but you can get the whole squad equipped and take advantage of the loadout selection method I provide:

The list is numbered GDC_OWeap0 - 30. below that is GDC_OurWeaps. If you add more loadouts (ex. GDC_OWeap31) you must add to the GDC_OurWeaps array at the end.

The list can get jumbled up, and I keep them spaced to provide some sort of order. it may be possible to import this file to excel to make modding it more organized, but I haven't tried it. 3 things are important to keep in mind:

-don't delete any commas! a missing comma while cause an error and maybe a seeming crash.

-If a magazine slot is empty ( "", ) make sure the count is 0 or the game will give you error message...many times.

-watch for wrong class names for weapons and magazines. Sometimes the readme for some addons isn't quite accurate...to avoid potential problems, get class names out of the addons' config file

rearm squad slots: GDC_squadSlots...are for the rearm dialog box at the machinegunner. the arrays are 10 long, the first for you and so on through each squad member. the number is the number in the GDC_OWeap list. These can be whatever loadout you want. just be aware that the 3 'sub' squadslots become available at the same time as the first 3 'normal' or 'advanced' slots, and the 2 'sil' slots are available with the last 2 'normal' slots.





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  September 27th, 2007 - 21:17   Comment (0)  

 
 
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