It's almost exactly one year ago that I made my decision not to raise another Arma server. In those days I said that I don't want to say never again. A year ago I couldn't imagine that this would happen one day...but now...this day has come!
In the following I want to write down what happened over the last year, what induced me to get back to Arma and what I did over the last 4 months to create another mad world for you (and of course for myself)
Some of you may not be interested in all topics below. I will use spoilers, so you can pick the text you want to read, if you read at all...
[spoiler=Health Restrictions] Some of you may remember that I became huge health problemes in June/July of 2016. My finger joints were swollen, aking and I had no power in my hands anymore. The medical outcome they told me was: Rheumatoid Arthritis! The following 6 months were the hell on earth. I wasn't able to fulfill my housekeeping, my job was pure horror carrying heavy stuff around with fingers I couldn't use at all. After work I was always exhausted and slept for 2-3 hours in the afternoon. I got a rheumatologist appointment only 6 months later!! To cut a long story short, my life was fucked and painkillers were my best friends... A dentist check-up 5 months later presented the reason for my issues. 2 teeth seemed to be the reason for my constantly inflammation and after they fell in January of 2017 my general health of pupils got better instantly. 2 weeks later I had that doctor's appointment and this asshole tried to force me to take methotrexate (MTX)! He wasn't the opinion that my teeth were the reason for my issues. Once more I was lucky that I'm entitled to my own opinion. It was obviously that he tried to corner me! But I fucked his life, because I upset his intention to make a pack of money with my healthiness. I didn't take not either one of his fucking poison pills and waited 2 months and let my blood check again. It normalised!! I cut him down to size and told him that he is a unscrupulous, money grubbing brute that shouldn't be allowed to work as a doctor at all... Fuck this scumbag! Don't trust doctor's!
It wasn't the case that all was fine again after a short time, quite the opposite. Slowly I got back to power and the inflamed fingers got more mobile, day after day, week after week, month after month. I had a bit of a relapse sometimes, even almost one year after. But that are tiny issues, nothing to compare with the torments of hell I had a year ago...
I changed my ways a bit and stopped smoking overnight after 29 years! The first 4 days were hard and incense sticks helped me a bit I don't smoke anymore now for almost 1 year, to be honest I miss it somedays, but on the other hand I'm proud that I made it.
6 month ago I met the girl of my life, so I enjoyed my real life a lot and didn't play at all in 2017. Nothing, it wasn't fun somehow without smoking, I didn't get into any game anymore. Instead I was glad that I was able again to ride my motorbike, I abandoned hope already to ride never again... Over the last year to the present day my life has been normalized and I thought about playing again a bit, but I shouldn't play for now... [/spoiler]
[spoiler=Inducement for my comeback] I think it's 5 months ago. I was pretty drunk and started a chat with Kris, one of my former admins. We chatted about old times and he told me that many peeps are still remembering and asking for me and my server(s). During this chat I realized that my work is still popular. Suddenly I felt like doing some Arma server stuff again, but it was not until 3 months later that this finally took shape. I think when I really would have had rheumatism, I wouldn't hosted a server again. But now that I was my old self again, I recovered my interest in Arma and started to bred over a new scenario for a comeback server... [/spoiler]
[spoiler=Development process for a new scenario] I still had over 60 GBP of donations, the first 4 months were paid already, so I took it slow. When I set up a server in the past, I did that 24/7 for 1 month and than it was finished. This time I made a lot of breaks, particulary at the weekends which are reserved for my girl I wanted something unique again, which becomes more difficult with every new server. It took 1 week to pick a map. My choice was Isla Abramia. I wanted snow again and zeds, again a survival aspect. I loved the scenario on the last Namalsk server. So I had a map , but still no scenario and I didn't want to take over the last one. I thought another week about it, without any result. So I made a promotion video, in the hope to get some inspiration. The outcome was that I discarded Abramia again. If you are interested in this outdated promo video, you can watch or download it here. I thought that more snow is needed, so the natural choice was Chernarus Winter. Back to the roots! Still unclear about the scenario I started to create a trader city on the hill of Klen. I was a bit out of practice and when I was finished after another week of work I was kinda unsatisfied with the result. Although it wasn't bad at all, you know that I set myself high standards. I took a break again for some days. I was a bit frustrated, that I still wasn't able to dream up a scenario that would please me. At this time I checked some mods and I stumbled again over something I had seen in the past already: IFA3 (Iron Front). I was excited as I viewed the screenshots, because suddenly I had so many ideas. Hell yeah, that's it!!! A World War II scenario! Unfortunately the trader city I created didn't fit in this scenario, so I abandoned it. I created a new and better one: The Headquarter. Iron Front provides several nations and uniforms, as well as weapons and vehicles. I didn't want to force players to play as a nazi, although we had the coolest uniforms no, players should be able to pick their nation. I didn't want the germans as enemy (because I want to play as one lol) so, the choice of the enemy was simple: Russians. All other nations are allied and are fighting against the red tide! So far so good. Historically absolutely nonsense, but hey it's more a fun server somehow and in many things not perfect. After the headquarter was finished I went on to... [/spoiler]
[spoiler=Spreadsheets and Map Enhancements] First I played around with a script called PTWS (Persistent Time and Weather System) approximately for a week. I created some new weather keyframes, it's disturbing to have dense ground fog at the coast and clear weather on higher grounds. The time and weather is saved to the database and provides seasons. Expect a rough weather... Then I had a look at the recipes for the Extendend Base Mod which I still had from my Namalsk server. Since IFA doesn't provides extra large backpacks I had to rework all recipes once again. After that was finished I found out that the fuel tank of the flamethrower has a capacity of 440 A bunch of work were the trader stuff I did next, weapons, tons of uniforms, vehicles and all that stuff. Even with a nice little tool that reads out all the classnames, it took some days to sort and test all the things and to define prices. Reworking the loot tables took some time as well. Cutting out all vanilla arma items, adding the new ones and defining the spawn chances. Next thing was to pimp the map for the world war setting. IFA provides some cool new buildings, damaged ones, bunkers and ruins as well. Of course they should have loot, so it was necessary to define loot positions for every single building. I did this for over 200 buildings. Crazy stuff, I felt relieved when I was done After that I started to pimp the map. I added buildings to every town and city as you can see in this screenshot When I was done I was kinda amazed that I added almost 1500 new objects to the map. Packed in a pbo file it shouldn't affect the framerate too much I hope. This was work of a week and again I felt relieved when I was done. Now it was time to animate the server with russian AI I reworked some missions and cut some out. Missions and some other settings are maybe still a bit unbalanced. I had problems with the Occupations Script, bandit groups were killing themselfes. I didn't figure out what is causing this, so I use only Occupations, the guarded crates and crash sites. For the roaming AI's I got back to the AI system we had on the Altis server: A3XAI. Finally I was at the point the server was nearly finished for the release... ...I tested a lot of things to ensure everything is working so far, fine tuning... [/spoiler]
So, in the end the outcome is a server which isn't perfect in many things, but hopefully enjoyable and fun for all:
Persistant Weather and Time (saved to the database) Seasons with different average temperatures Snowfall depending on temperatures and overcast (no longer on surfaces) Reduced snowfall inside of buildings (well at least a bit ) Different Acceleration of time at night and day Ambient Sounds, like wind, creaks in houses or animals like wolfs, snow footstep sounds Hunting (default Exile feature) Random Bombing Raids on towns R3F Towing Airdrop Assistance
Custom Trading Post (Headquarter) Custom trader and loot tables with only WWII weapons, cars, tanks and planes from different nations: German, UK, US, Finnland, France, Poland, Czechia, Italia 1410 new objects added to the map (331 of it simple objects) Even not walkable buildings spawn loot 40 additional flags Radiation outside the map (no, you won't build outside the map )
In combat only 1st person view! (doesn't apply to vehicles and planes) The position of a mission marker has a random radius of 150-250m to prevent mindless mortar firing from the distance. Yes, mortars An awesome beginning balance of 1500 pop tabs for every new player!
Radiation Zone and Zeds on Skalisty Island. A box with some random loot, some guaranteed unique backpacks with 320 Capacity (which cannot be bought) and 15.000 poptabs spawning inside of one of 3 buildings at one of 92 random positions. Seek and destroy! No Zeds in the country (by now) except hordes (day & night every 45 minutes) and harrassing Zeds (only) at nights (with 50% spawn chance of 2 zeds for each player) If you manage to land on the Aircraft Carrier at the south coast, you can grab the 2500 pop tabs from the box there. You only have to manage to get back to the coast Random spawning, guarded Gear Crates and Heli Crashsites (of course no helis in WWII, thus I'm using plane wrecks) A lumberjack trader (again) were you can sell wood to get some money and respect...and much else.
And as Stollenwerk has returned to cause havoc in a brand new Arma server, So has Master returned to make sure Stol does not have to destroy and maim bodies alone!
WWII is a unique Arma 3 setting and it beeing winter is going to add extra emersion. Spread the word and join in for the fun of playing and shooting WWII era vehicles and soldiers.
I am so pleased to hear that you are feeling much better and life is treating you so much more fairly mate. You certainly deserve it.
I saw you pop up on a few threads on exilemod and wondered what you were planning, and now I know. Yet another unique and interesting take with the use of Exile, can't wait to get my hands on it, take it for a spin and give those Ruskies a damn good thrashing.
I'm in. I can find new ways of being dependably useless. Nice to know you're back Mr S. Please don't let Master near a tank. he gets very strange and tries to destroy everyone.:)
Sad, that particulary the old regular players indicated great interest and then don't play at all. I don't give a shit about it, but would have prefered a straight word instead of flummeries...same for MadMarc80...
Thema drucken
23.01.2018 18:47
no, players should be able to pick their nation.
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