Hello everyone, Ian again, welcome to another video of Editor Developer Diary series. Today let’s see another aspect of Arma II, which is the mission editing capability also, we’ll add a few notes on battlefield tactics.
The game isn’t just a preset sequence of evens and particles of places; everything that happens is fully dynamic. Our mission editor is actually very easy to use, on the right, you can see the main toolbar, and there you can select all types of entities that you would like to insert on the game world. Units, groups, triggers, waypoints and markers, some of the entities can also be synchronized; you can change the editing mode by pressing the F keys, so default is F1, which is for inserting a single unit to our object.
You can select the side photo object that some sites have various captions as well as class, which can be man, aired, armored cast; there are lots of options, so for now I’ll just insert default option for intervention life in there. There he is, I press F2 to switch to the groups mode, how I can insert an inter loop, the game is split by sides of factions, type, so I just insert intervene and militia there. So this is only enough for a basic scenario, however you may want to give the units some waypoints, so I press F4 and stage on a main toolbar to waypoints more and give the unit the waypoint.
Basic waypoint is moved but there are many, many other kinds of waypoints used for AI. I will switch then to combat behavior; AI will react based on behavior so in combat for example they will engage the enemies, in stealth they’ll try to avoid being spotted. I will allow them to open fire and engage to kill and I’ll allow for some randomization in placement and completion radius. So now that I already have a general combat scenario, I can save it and click on preview to play the pre made combat scenario straight away.
Note that this scenario can play many, many different ways and despite of undertaking two minutes to create it, it is very playable. I know there are enemies somewhere behind the house, so they try to engage them. It’s going to be very hard because I’m alone against a large squad. I need to be extremely cautious. I’m continually using the alt key to scan the surrounding environment in order to prevent any encounter that would kill me.
I’m trying to approach them from behind, from their back so that way I may have a chance to win this encounter. Note that the AI can seek me, so there is one AI hiding, I got him, and now the rest of the AI probably heard me already so it’s about time to try to hide. The AI uses lots of advanced techniques and tactics, they use the radio to communicate with each other and they will not try to suppress me and eventually hunt me down. Luckily, none of them spotted me yet, so I’m relatively safe, however it’s good to run away.
Uh-oh, I ran to an open field and they instantly killed me. Don’t be fooled that the game at first looks like a normal first person shooter. You need to forget all the tactics you might learn from other shooters because most of them simply wont work in this game. It’s very important to change the way we think about the combat. You need to think of it as all for real and try to play like in real war. That means you need to be very careful, you need to be prepared at all times for surprises and then all the time you need to have an advantage over the enemies by thinking ahead, trying to outsmart them.
I have spotted one enemy over a game; it’s always good to keep changing your location because if you’re suppressed in one particular area for too long it’s more than likely that the enemy will not allow you to leave anymore. So if you know that your position has been compromised, its time to move to a completely different place. As you noticed, the AI can be really tough enemy, hard to fight against, so it’s essential to move in a group with other friendly units otherwise their domination maybe overwhelming.
Keep low and hide where ever and whenever you can because when they spot you, your chances are rather low, so be a silent hunter and surprise them and don’t let them surprise you. Also even a few mouse clicks can quickly prepare interesting game play. The game can be fully scripted for advanced campaigns, cut scenes and more events machine behavior, however even with just a mouse you can prepare great missions for yourself and others. As you saw, it was really that simple, so have fun with Arma II.
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