Urban Assault Orillan Campaign: V1.0 Release

[Ormu]

Completed! This was one of the best campaigns I've played.

However, there was a harder challenge remaining. Too bad UA doesn't show the kill statistics when you continue a mission after beaming out once. I only spent around 10 minutes on that level, then beamed out and came back later with proper equipment.

I also tried to restart this mission from the beginning by editing the save files, but I considered it cheating. For some reason, the total game time counter went buggy as well. I had visited some earlier levels to collect useful vehicles from them but it couldn't have taken 8 hours.

edit: Now that I think about this... could UA add the entire time spent on a particular level to the total counter each time you exit that level? It might explain this issue.


Warning: The rest of this post may contain spoilers!

Some bugs I noticed, in addition to the level size and Stoudson bomb issues:

-- On levels where there's an AI host station on your side, the AI host may create healing vehicles to attack ordinary enemies. Such actions are completely useless of course. This may be hard to fix properly, but using the job_**** parameters creatively might help.

-- I'm not sure if this can be fixed, but on level 22, the "Atomic Bomb" unit belongs to the AI host station that is on your side. Jumping directly into it is not recommended. You can "hijack" it by drag-selecting multiple vehicles on the map (at least one must already belong to you), but I noticed that this may lead to a crash.

-- On level 25, the enemy hosts suddenly stopped all construction and vehicle production. After destroying 2 of them, the remaining one started to produce units again. This may be a bug in UA itself.

-- On level 22, one of the tech upgrades has a misplaced keyword. This is not a serious issue but I noticed this while trying to figure out something else.

-- After beaming out from level 19, bogus vehicles appeared in the creation menu. I beamed out with the Myko vehicles which may have caused this. (I can now see that those vehicles were meant to be used on that level only.) This might be a bug in UA. See the screenshot below.

[medicineman]

** Potential spoilers in response.

Completed! This was one of the best campaigns I've played.

However, there was a harder challenge remaining. Too bad UA doesn't show the kill statistics when you continue a mission after beaming out once. I only spent around 10 minutes on that level, then beamed out and came back later with proper equipment.

Thanks! Glad you liked it! I had that happen too, there were a few levels I barely escaped from.

-- On levels where there's an AI host station on your side, the AI host may create healing vehicles to attack ordinary enemies. Such actions are completely useless of course. This may be hard to fix properly, but using the job_**** parameters creatively might help.

Will make a note to adjust that. Setting everything to 1 ought to do the trick.

-- I'm not sure if this can be fixed, but on level 22, the "Atomic Bomb" unit belongs to the AI host station that is on your side. Jumping directly into it is not recommended. You can "hijack" it by drag-selecting multiple vehicles on the map (at least one must already belong to you), but I noticed that this may lead to a crash.

I haven't been able to fix that... The game gives all the units to the last station defined for a given faction. Since the AI comes second in the ldf, it seems to go to that. I'll think of a way to hint that the player has to grab it. Maybe the AI is trying to use it too which could cause it to crash, I'll check.

-- On level 25, the enemy hosts suddenly stopped all construction and vehicle production. After destroying 2 of them, the remaining one started to produce units again. This may be a bug in UA itself.

Might be UA doing something weird. I experienced a serious onslaught.

-- On level 22, one of the tech upgrades has a misplaced keyword. This is not a serious issue but I noticed this while trying to figure out something else.

-- After beaming out from level 19, bogus vehicles appeared in the creation menu. I beamed out with the Myko vehicles which may have caused this. (I can now see that those vehicles were meant to be used on that level only.) This might be a bug in UA. See the screenshot below.

Will fix the upgrade. Yeah, I need to find a good way to disable those units since they seem to hang around after the level is over (for one level at least). A lazy way might be to copy/paste disable commands into most/all of the other levels.

Thanks for your feedback!

[CharlotteLabyrinth]

Nice review Ormu, and those screenshots look really great! I can't wait to try this amazing mod from medicineman by myself.


To answer some of the topics being discussed:

I also tried to restart this mission from the beginning by editing the save files, but I considered it cheating. For some reason, the total game time counter went buggy as well. I had visited some earlier levels to collect useful vehicles from them but it couldn't have taken 8 hours.

edit: Now that I think about this... could UA add the entire time spent on a particular level to the total counter each time you exit that level? It might explain this issue.

It seems like true in UA:Source, I haven't checked in the original UA... Personally, I would consider this as a bug if it also happens in the original game.

Incidentally, the total played time displayed in the debriefing screens slightly differ from Save/Load screen: As it only counts the gameplay time from the moment the mission has started, up until the user's host station is placed over open Beam Gate; whereas the time stamps displayed in Save/Load screen next to user profiles do include the additional time taken during the beam out process (i.e. the time taken for units being transported out of the level at the end).

-- On levels where there's an AI host station on your side, the AI host may create healing vehicles to attack ordinary enemies. Such actions are completely useless of course. This may be hard to fix properly, but using the job_**** parameters creatively might help.

Will make a note to adjust that. Setting everything to 1 ought to do the trick.

The job_ parameters will do the trick for AI adjustments. 0 might be preferable to 1 since apparently it's also a functional value. Also while unverified, lowering a unit's shield value might potentially help at further discouraging its usages, too.

-- I'm not sure if this can be fixed, but on level 22, the "Atomic Bomb" unit belongs to the AI host station that is on your side. Jumping directly into it is not recommended. You can "hijack" it by drag-selecting multiple vehicles on the map (at least one must already belong to you), but I noticed that this may lead to a crash.

I haven't been able to fix that... The game gives all the units to the last station defined for a given faction. Since the AI comes second in the ldf, it seems to go to that. I'll think of a way to hint that the player has to grab it. Maybe the AI is trying to use it too which could cause it to crash, I'll check.

From my experience, jumping into AI managed vehicles and moving around is fine, but converting them into your control and further giving them orders could be detrimental for the game's stability…

-- On level 25, the enemy hosts suddenly stopped all construction and vehicle production. After destroying 2 of them, the remaining one started to produce units again. This may be a bug in UA itself.

Might be UA doing something weird. I experienced a serious onslaught.

Hmm... There are many possible reasons for this 'stuck' behaviour: Given that AI host station wasn't out of energy, either the AI host station did not had direct line of sight (AI requires visible targets on the map before they can deploy units there) over enemy units, or (more likely!) the AI host station's movement was somehow stuck at something while attempting to move into other places. Usually, complex collision models of environments and physical properties of individual robos are responsible for this.


You may be able to check if this is the case by manipulating the save game file so that you are in a direct ownership of the problematic AI host station, and verify where its displacement vector is aligned at. If the host station is on the move, then it's doing nothing because it's stuck at the spot (obstalces, terrains... etc.) for some reason.

Similarly, if a host station is designed to 'flux' and 'twist' in the script, when it gets stuck at somewhere or something while en route, it will neither perform 'flux' nor 'twist' when they are moving; even if it may simply look stationary in its position. You can check it in this way, too.


For the record, UA AI will only issue new orders to units after the current orders given to units have been achieved. This logic applies to robo AI as well; the main problem here is that AI cannot actively abort their current orders given to themselves! It is also the lynchpin of the notoriously clumsy radar construction AI.

Perhaps the destruction of other host stations in the level might have had a 'refresh' effect on its routine...?

-- On level 22, one of the tech upgrades has a misplaced keyword. This is not a serious issue but I noticed this while trying to figure out something else.

-- After beaming out from level 19, bogus vehicles appeared in the creation menu. I beamed out with the Myko vehicles which may have caused this. (I can now see that those vehicles were meant to be used on that level only.) This might be a bug in UA. See the screenshot below.

Will fix the upgrade. Yeah, I need to find a good way to disable those units since they seem to hang around after the level is over (for one level at least). A lazy way might be to copy/paste disable commands into most/all of the other levels.

Since I haven't looked at the file structures of the mod yet, I can't say with certainty but perhaps organising a new set of dedicated and separate unit script files to load and apply into each level when needed accordingly might help? I really liked how Metropolis Dawn expansion made use of numerous data scripts to create more controlled and polished gameplay environment whenever necessary.

[medicineman]

The job_ parameters will do the trick for AI adjustments. 0 might be preferable to 1 since apparently it's also a functional value. Also while unverified, lowering a unit's shield value might potentially help at further discouraging its usages, too.

Neat. I did not know you could do that.

Hmm... There are many possible reasons for this 'stuck' behaviour: Given that AI host station wasn't out of energy, either the AI host station did not had direct line of sight (AI requires visible targets on the map before they can deploy units there) over enemy units, or (more likely!) the AI host station's movement was somehow stuck at something while attempting to move into other places. Usually, complex collision models of environments and physical properties of individual robos are responsible for this.

This may be the case as that level has really dense city (lots of the sectors with 8 skyscrapers and similar). It's part of the aesthetic, so I want to mostly keep it, but maybe I can thin it out a little and give the enemy hosts some paths to take. However the AI sometimes does dumb things, so I won't be surprised if that persists and it still gets stuck somewhere. One reason I may not have noticed this was that I made extensive use of the beam satellites in that fight and leveled quite a few buildings.

That said, I do seem to remember host stations crashing into and destroying buildings while on the move.

-- On level 22, one of the tech upgrades has a misplaced keyword. This is not a serious issue but I noticed this while trying to figure out something else.

-- After beaming out from level 19, bogus vehicles appeared in the creation menu. I beamed out with the Myko vehicles which may have caused this. (I can now see that those vehicles were meant to be used on that level only.) This might be a bug in UA. See the screenshot below.

Will fix the upgrade. Yeah, I need to find a good way to disable those units since they seem to hang around after the level is over (for one level at least). A lazy way might be to copy/paste disable commands into most/all of the other levels.

Since I haven't looked at the file structures of the mod yet, I can't say with certainty but perhaps organising a new set of dedicated and separate unit script files to load and apply into each level when needed accordingly might help? I really liked how Metropolis Dawn expansion made use of numerous data scripts to create more controlled and polished gameplay environment whenever necessary.

Yeah, maybe that would be best here. There are a ton of one-of units in the game such that I didn't feel that I had enough empty slots, so I defined the vehicle in the ldf itself, like folks used to do with the multiplayer levels, so that it would no longer exist after that level. However most of them are not creatible, so that works; those particular vehicles are so maybe I'll just put them in the scripts somewhere - my original goal was to have them only creatible there, much like the Resistance Bronj in the original game.

Thanks for your feedback CL! I'll get on the revised version as soon as time permits...

[CharlotteLabyrinth]

It feels a bit weird making feedback here because I haven't even started the mod yet. But I do like discussing about UA in general so...

Sometimes the AI can be quite unpredictable with their behaviours and unit selections. Apparently it does calculate in speed and weapon firepower of units, or distances between their targets as well. But I do not know how these information directly translate into AI's decision makings. But it's probably because we have not gathered fully structured data about how UA AI heuristics really work.

This may be the case as that level has really dense city (lots of the sectors with 8 skyscrapers and similar). It's part of the aesthetic, so I want to mostly keep it, but maybe I can thin it out a little and give the enemy hosts some paths to take. However the AI sometimes does dumb things, so I won't be surprised if that persists and it still gets stuck somewhere. One reason I may not have noticed this was that I made extensive use of the beam satellites in that fight and leveled quite a few buildings.

That said, I do seem to remember host stations crashing into and destroying buildings while on the move.

This is true. From what I've observed, AI host stations require certain threshold momentum before they can damage and destroy structures on collision. If they do not have enough force to break through objects, they will often attempt to detour or climb over the blocking structures.

It is worth noting that, AI host stations will never damage or destroy friendly factional structures which have active components (such as flak guns or radar dishes) on them. This usually makes them get stuck quite easily while moving around within their own lines of flaks.

The issues can be somewhat alleviated by adjusting host station collision models so that they possess less complex builds.

Yeah, maybe that would be best here. There are a ton of one-of units in the game such that I didn't feel that I had enough empty slots, so I defined the vehicle in the ldf itself, like folks used to do with the multiplayer levels, so that it would no longer exist after that level. However most of them are not creatible, so that works; those particular vehicles are so maybe I'll just put them in the scripts somewhere - my original goal was to have them only creatible there, much like the Resistance Bronj in the original game.

Oh yes, I remember that. If I recall correctly, it works in a such way because Resistance Bronsteijn is included in Feinde.scr script file (which gets 'refreshed' each time when starting a new mission in the original campaign, thanks to the directive line "include data:scripts/startup2.scr" present in all level files) instead User.scr script file (which is not a part of 'startup2.scr' group and so does not get refreshed).