The Fighting TTLGers present: Arma 3 (a TTLG Coop Saturdays spin-off) - by Thirith
Thirith on 23/7/2017 at 09:00
As we've now got a group of people playing
Arma 3 semi-regularly, and since it's the game where we can easily add more players if anyone's interested, I thought I'd make a dedicated thread - for information on the game, details on how to set up the game, specifics on the upcoming session, tips, recaps, discussion and feedback.
What's all this about Arma, and why should I care?First of all, for those who don't know
Arma, (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARMA_(series)) here's some info, straight from Wikipedia:
"ARMA ... is a series of first person tactical military shooters... It features large elements of realism and simulation; a blend of large-scale military conflict spread across large areas alongside the more close quartered battles."
People's first impression of
Arma tends to be that it's clunky and unforgiving, with a fiendishly steep learning curve. At the same time, few military shooters offer the scope and the range of gameplay and tactics that
Arma does, from regular infantry warfare via search-and-rescue or Close Air Support to large-scale combined operations. It
is rather clunky and it isn't as immediately approachable as most shooters, but especially in coop with friends it can be learnt pretty quickly. Also, there's an active community making missions, guides and videos. I can especially recommend Dslyecxi's video guides, (
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQEd6zRLOafWtrQ4EAYKl6z23hvCLYgW6) all of which can be accessed here.
The following two may be especially pertinent to the TTLG coop sessions:
[video=youtube;k3DyRtMkRNI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DyRtMkRNI[/video]
[video=youtube;lLH7ctfTeBA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLH7ctfTeBA[/video]
TTLG goes Arma!Now, to return to the TTLG coop sessions: for the last few months, we've been running
Arma 3 coop sessions every 2-3 weeks on Saturday in the afternoon (UK time). You can find the overall information at our Steam group: (
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/ArmaTTLG)
Here's a video of some of our adventures, courtesy of henke and myself:
[video=youtube;XPq8sNh8WTc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oH7nYG2PDbw[/video]
[video=youtube;w6qySyMIwik]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6qySyMIwik[/video]
Who do I have to shoot to join?What do you actually need to play:
*
Arma 3*
The Apex DLC (You don't need any of the otherDLC, although you will have access to more equipment if you do own it.)
*
Teamspeak 3 (and a headset or speakers and a mic). We're using this to communicate during the sessions.
*
A mod set including additional maps, factions, AI tweaks and quality-of-life mods, which you can download from Steam. You can find the right versions of the mods (
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=877349651) listed in my Steam Workshop collection
TTLG coop collection.
You can also find the
optional mods that I'm using in the collection (
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2154094306)
TTLG coop collection: optional add-ons:
*
DynaSound 2 (830.7 MB): A sound modification that redoes all weapon and many vehicle sounds.
*
Enhanced Soundscape (102.5 MB): A sound modification that improves reverb in-game.
*
MRB Voice Stop (0.5 MB): Disables the AI radio protocols. Puts an end to the constant chatter.
*
Weedkiller for Altis, Stratis and Malden (0.2 MB): Reduces the ground clutter that gets in your way when you're crawling.
*
Helicopter Dust Efx Mod (0.7 MB): Increases the helicopter downwash effect. Warning: May create unwanted cover for assassination targets...
*
Enhanced Missile Smoke + Lighting Efx Mod v1.4 (0.3 MB): What it says in the mod name.
*
Immerse (0.1 MB): Adds some subtle camera shake and twitching when there are weapon fire or explosions nearby.
*
Align (0.1 MB): Adds some subtle animation to sights when taking aim; feels less stiff but doesn't actually affect your aim.
*
CH View Distance (0.1 MB): On dedicated servers, the view distance seems to be turned down massively. This mod lets you set the view distance however you like client-side, allowing for different settings on foot, in vehicles and when flying.
Some additional notes:
*
If you are a newcomer and would like to join, why not post in this thread or drop me a PM? The gang is happy to help with questions, and I might be able to help people set things up and test their setup spontaneously.
* Please note that
there is no requirement to join the entire session; if you can just join for half an hour or an hour, you should still feel free to join. Best to let me know beforehand, though, so I can choose the missions accordingly.
*
If you'd like to invite friends from outside TTLG, please feel free to do so. The more the merrier. Ideally they shouldn't be too hung up on milsim realism, because we're not exactly the most coordinated bunch.
Finally, when's the next session going to happen? Here's the relevant info - which I'll always try to keep updated:
Quote:
The next Arma 3 coop session is planned for:
Date: Sat, 5 February 2022
Time: 3-6pm UK timeAs always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
And that's it for now! I'll keep this post updated with the relevant info. Hoping to see you on Altis, Stratis or Malden!
Thirith on 5/8/2017 at 17:08
And on this fine summer day (well, summer for some of us) we had a small but select group of warriors: Malf, Piglick, Sulphur (AKA James Mason) and myself. For some reason - AI updates, mods or the Gods of Arma being fickle bastards? - practically every mission today was a proper meatgrinder, with several of them offering nothing in the way of revive or respawn. Proper, hard-as-nails, old-school Arma. Oh yeah, and Malf hovering in mid-air and Sulphur suddenly finding himself in the middle of a mountain.
After a combat patrol gone wrong in Malden, a stealthy hostage rescue mission that turned into a massacre at the Ghost Hotel (we were the ones being massacred) and us getting picked off one by one on an Altis mountainside, we ended up at the Stratis military airfield for some sheepkilling and PvP. My best moment: crashing a helicopter into Sulphur... who was already dead, killed by Malf or Piglick.
It's been fun, gents, and I'm looking forward to the next session. I'll post an update here and on Steam as soon as I know when it'll be. Thanks for the game!
PigLick on 5/8/2017 at 17:11
It was very enjoyable, I actually wouldnt mind trying that mountain mission again sometime.
Thirith on 5/8/2017 at 17:32
Yeah, I thought that one was shaping up nicely. Perhaps a different approach next time.
Thirith on 10/8/2017 at 11:34
Quick update: I started tweaking the missions I've got for our sessions to add a revive system, as it sucks if the only options are instadeath or instadeath + respawn. I very much prefer Arma when it finds a balance between realism and playability, and a wounding/revive system helps with this.
The built-in revive system didn't seem to work; I added the required lines of code, but nothing happened. (Thanks to henke and Jeshibu for helping me test this!) However, the fan-made AIS script works and is pretty snazzy: when someone is wounded (I think this goes for all playable characters, whether they're currently being played or not), they go down but don't die. You first stabilise them so they don't bleed to death, then you can drag or carry them away from enemy fire and revive them. I'm curious to try this out in practice. In any case, only about 300 missions to unpack and check whether I need to add the revive system. It sounds like a hassle, and it is one, but it's not as bad as it could be: it's basically just a matter of copying and pasting a few lines of code and copying a directory, and voilà: revivability!
Thirith on 19/8/2017 at 18:05
Just finished a marathon session of Arma with henke, Malf, Jeshibu and Sulphur... and Price, the Almost But Not Entirely Useless AI who spent most of the mission sitting in the truck doing Sudokus. The mission, Sigma Quadrant 2, had us take out fuel trucks fleeing to the hills, command posts, and too many armoured vehicles with the wrong kind of rocket launchers and rockets. It's only on the very last tank that I realised a different launcher would not only do more damage but would also not require us to lock on.
While some of the mission was somewhat frustrating - godlike AI aim and sadistic armoured vehicles taking us out every time we were revived will do that - as a whole it was great fun and suitably epic...
... and that's not even mentioning Malf swimming a shark-infested bay to get back to the final tank. And then almost being taken out by us.
Edit: I should've mentioned our greatest enemy: DLC ad popups. I need to find out how to get around these, because it sucks for everyone who's suddenly got adds for Jets DLC plastered across their screens.
Thirith on 20/8/2017 at 07:56
Couple of P.S.es on yesterday's session:
1) Launchers* I've tested the different launchers, and for situations where we face ground vehicles, the regular Titan launcher isn't good, as it's an anti-air weapon.
* The Titan Compact launcher with AT missiles should work, either by using lock-on (but for that the vehicle in question has to be hot; you can switch to heat vision mode by pressing N) or by guiding the missile to where you're aiming at. The latter still does take some practice, though; I might cobble together a quick test scenario that we can launch into next time.
* The PCML launcher also works reasonably well, either in dumb-fire mode (if the target isn't hot) or by locking on.
Some parts of yesterday's epic mission would've been easier if we'd known this earlier on, I suspect.
2) DLC pop-upsIt seems that using any of the DLC items in the Virtual Arsenal will result in those who haven't got the DLC getting annoying pop-up ads. In the arsenal, those items should be recognisable, though. If you check out the screenshot at (
https://tinyurl.com/ycmouuh8), you'll see that some items have a symbol next to them; these symbols represent the different DLCs, e.g. the LIM-85 5.56 mm is part of the Apex DLC, while the various MAR-10 variants are from the Marksmen DLC. Note that if there's a Virtual Ammobox option in a mission, that one doesn't show the DLC icons, so it's best to do things from the Virtual Arsenal. I'm sorry, Jesh, it's likely that your favourite hat is one of the DLC items.
henke on 20/8/2017 at 14:59
Our latest adventure.
[video=youtube;hjZfNittXH8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjZfNittXH8[/video]
Thirith on 20/8/2017 at 16:30
Nice! By the way, it seems that it may have been my own edits (i.e. adding the wounding/revive system) that killed the option to respawn at the truck. Oops... However, I've since found out how I can add that back in again in a fairly simple way. Plenty more Sigma Quadrants, so I will have a few more chances to repair or add something to the mission and break something else in the process. :cheeky:
Pyrian on 20/8/2017 at 22:19
One little bug in the code,
One little bug!
Code a fix, patch it in,
Two little bugs in the code.