Hello all. I'm truly astounded by the amazing response of the gaming community to this mission and I thank you all for your support and feedback. It hope that everyone who downloaded and played This is War v2.5 was able to derive some enjoyment from the mission. For those that aren't aware, This is War was created by a one man development team and thus, is subject to the circumstances of real life. I have returned to college for programming and have been unable to devote much time at all to mission development and gaming in general. I still have managed to remain fairly active on the forums for both Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising and ArmA though.
While I'm well aware of the problems that remain in Dragon Rising, I've done the best I can to circumvent these issues with the creative use of scripting. That said, issues still remain that may affect the outcome of your experience when you play the game. As long as you go into the game with the awareness of these issues, you should find your experience an enjoyable one.
One issue that has come up a couple of times regarding the mission is the campaign save corruption but. This is a game bug that occurs when there is heavy scripting and a lot of entities at the time of the checkpoint creation. There are really no consistent circumstances under which this bug occurs and it creates problems in larger missions like This is War. To avoid the loss of progress in the game, I've created a "esave" file which stores data about the progress you have made during your adventures. If the campaign save becomes corrupted and will not load, you can simply restart your campaign and the island will return to the state it was in when the problem occurred. You will restart at the beach where you began, but all of the capture points you have taken, will still belong to you. All of the defense assets you've destroyed and intel you have gathered will also be updated so you can just go back to where you were and carry on, or work on a different part of the island. While I know this isn't the cleanest solution, it is a solution that works and allows you to finish what you started instead of sending you back to square one.
I've been made aware of a couple of issues regarding prop placement in the mission and I will fix them as I get the time to do so, but they really do not affect the overall operation of the mission so they are not priority one.
Now, what have I done you ask?? Well, a while back on the flashpoint forums a user named dewi316 took the time to create an island modification that adds lighting to the interior of houses and other effects such as smoke from chimneys and fires in the fireplaces. In addition, generators produce sounds when you are near them. This modification adds a spectacular level of immersion to the game during night time engagements. This modification has now been incorporated into This is War which adds a new level of awesome to night combat.
I have also attempted to address an issue that affects coop play and I believe may have been causing a CTD issue with the game. This issue is related to the emplacement weapons that you will find at different locations on the map. When these weapons were spawned into the game, removed and re-spawned with the method I was using, I believe it was causing the game to crash. I have incorporated a solution proposed by tjdagger on the Flashpoint forums that uses a different function to bring these entities in and out of the game and increases the stability of the mission.
One other thing is expanding the area in which vehicles can operate in the game. I notices that when I tried to engage the enemy using a helicopter that the entity management section of my code was removing the vehicles I was engaging and replacing them with new and different vehicles when I made a wide turn. I've increased the parameters that control those entities in hopes to improve the mechanics of vehicular combat in This is War.
Last and probably the biggest change has been the addition of different campaign versions that have you starting the mission on different points of the island, but all run concurrent using the esave file. This means that you can run several different campaign fronts starting at different places on the island and your progress updates regardless of where you are. This allows you to enjoy more locations in the game without having to start on the same old beach all of the time.
All of these changes are still in the final testing and implementation phase, but I'm hoping to deliver them to you in the near future. Thanks so much for the great feedback and continued participation with this mission. It truly lifts my spirits.
Cheers :)
tvig
