Jackpine Savages' Home on the 'Net

https://discord.gg/R7VEbhmZ?event=1412584482216607786

IP is 147.124.197.80:2001
Player limit 20 (Who knew that AR was going to blow up the way that it did?)

Password posted in the Jackpine Savages Discord channel. The channel is invitation only so let us know if you need one.

Enhanced Movement Rework is installed and appears to be working just fine.

Long overdue update here.

After an enthusiastic response to AU at a LAN party a couple of weeks ago, I've been working to get it up and stable on A3 Llama. After a lot of wailing, gnashing of teeth, and sacrificing of old keyboards by the light of the new moon we're finally there!

At one point I ended up having to move Llama to a new server so the IP address has changed. The name is still listed as ! =JpS= Llama is Reborn!. (note the space after the first exclamation point.) The IP address is 144.48.104.166 port 2302.

Besides Antistasi Ultimate, the server is currently running Drongo's DYEL mod and supporting Enhanced Movement as a client side mod.

Future Plans

• Get Enhanced Movement Rework supported because it adds some nice features to EM.
• Start planning the next AU campaign. We have a lot of options here because AU supports a whole bunch of maps and faction mods. I'm leaning toward Lingor because it's a gorgeous tropic map and probably RHS factions.
• Support for other quality of life mods.

Vague Notions

• What to do about the Teamspeak server? We haven't been using it at all. I'm seriously considering shutting it down in favor of helping to pay for a headless client.
• Map choices. Anyone have any preferences?
• Factions. Again, any preferences? AU supports a TON. Check out the list on their website to see if anything grabs your attention. The Halo one looks like an interesting diversion, for example.
• What other quality of life mods are people interested in? (Yes, Bullets, Zeus Enhanced is on my list to dig into.)  In all seriousness, though, I'm thinking that ACE might be a nice addition. Drongo's Artillery is another possibility. Etc.
• Memory upgrade for the server. It's running with only 4 GB at the moment which is pretty minimal these days. I haven't dug into HostHavoc's pricing lately, though.

We currently have a tentative Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday at 7 PM Central starting time when a bunch of us try to jump on. It's an open invitation for anyone to join so feel free to join us.

This is a very free form schedule. We won't all be there every planned night and mission schedules will vary quite a bit in length. It all depends on who can shake loose and when.

Don't hold yourself to just that time slot either. Again, feel free to jump on whenever you want. The more, the merrier!

I've been messing about with a few mods and scenarios. At the moment the server is running Conflict PvE Remixed. It basically takes the official default Conflict mode which is PvPvE and eliminates one player faction. It keeps all of the default stuff in Conflict; ranking system, capture points, emphasis on fulfilling roles like medic, engineer, logistics, etc.

Think of it as baby steps towards a KP Liberation or Anti-stasi like gameplay. It's fun as is but not as complex as it could be. Even so, I can see the outlines of where it could be developed further. It has real possibilities for further customization. 

I also took a crack at getting Overthrow running without success. Overthrow is a lot closer in spirit to Anti-stasi and might be another fun scenario to play. Unfortunately, development on it had stalled at some point and I couldn't get it to run.

I see that the mod team is digging back into it over the Christmas break. Hopefully they solved the issues with getting it running. I'll likely throw that up soon to check it out.

Finally, I am trying out some admin tools to see how well behaved they might be. More to come on those.

DARK!!!  Long time, buddy! We missed you at last summer's LAN! I'm really looking forward to seeing you online.

After what? A year and a half since it was first released? 

It has gone through a heck of a lot of development since then. Besides the usual bug squashing and performance improvements that accompanies any new release there are a ton of new toys to play with.

The trailer for the release is pretty cool. It shows off a bunch of the new features starting with a couple of transport helos! It also spotlights a bunch of specialized support trucks; new command truck, ambulance, supply, fuel, ammo, vehicle maintenance, etc. In addition to the vehicles there are also new or revamped depots.

• Speaking of the helos, controls for flying them are pretty basic at the moment. No support for things like TrackIR or HOTAS set ups yet. Even so they fly pretty well with just keyboard and mouse. I haven't tried a joystick yet as I don't have one down here.
• The map UI is a lot more useful now. I haven't explored all of the changes yet. A couple that I have tried are:
  
  • There's a new built in protractor for angles and distances.
  • Even better is a really nice way to add notes, comments, etc. Just double-click and a wheel pops up to let you add icons really fast. It's really slick.
  [li]In addition, Conflict has been heavily re-written to take advantage of the new features. It now sports a brand new ranking system, a completely revamped supply system, a new medic system, vehicle repair, a new mobile respawn system, and other gameplay tweaks.
• Playing as a medic, logistics, vehicle repair, sapper, are all roles that players are now able to do in Conflict. Each role can earn points for advancement up the ranks to gain access to the bigger depots and vehicles. The helopad, for example, isn't available until someone reaches sergeant.

Development hasn't stopped with this release by any means. This is Bohemia Interactive after all. I don't think they know HOW to stop. Check out the planned roadmap for the goodies that they're planning going forward.

I found a video by Ironbeard that does a pretty good breakdown of the more interesting updates in 1.0. Well worth watching if you have a free half hour.

I've updated our AR server and set it to vanilla Conflict mode for the time being. You can find it at ! =JpS= Llama is Reborn! 147.124.197.80:2001. (Note the leading exclamation point to push it near the top of the list when sorting by name.)

I plan to play Tuesdays and Thursdays starting between 7 and 8 Eastern plus some weekend evenings. Anyone care to join me?

Quick note: If you played AR during its beta period I highly recommend completely wiping all of the mods that you downloaded. The Workshop was reset when it went to 1.0. I had double entries of all the mods when AR updated my cache.

Finally, with all of the updates plus what I've seen what they've done with Conflict? I'm looking forward to seeing what modders are going to do with it. There's at least one PvE CTI mode out there that I saw in beta that I'm hoping will be re-released now that 1.0 is out. It's not quite at the level of sophistication of Antistasi or KP Liberation (yet). With a pretty vibrant modding community though, who knows? We may have something pretty quickly.

I spoke too soon! Work became all consuming again and I have had very little time and energy to do any mission creation until very recently.

For the past three weeks or so I've been spending my time with Drongo's collection of tools for mission creation in Arma 3. It's amazing what he's managed to put together.

At the moment I have a long running test mission that I'm playing around with on Altis. Similar in concept to KP Liberation or Antistasi although I'm heavily influenced by the war in Urkaine. I have the main population and weather modules set up the way that I like. I have barebones versions of the missions, CAS, and arty modules set up. I have a few others of Drongo's that I'm interested in that I want to play around with.

There's also an AI "High Command" mod called "NR6 PACK - HAL Evolved" or "Hetman Artificial Leader NR6 Edition." It gets high marks for creating an aggressive opposing AI and/or an overall friendly commander. I'm looking forward to playing with both of them to so see if it can fill the capabilities that ALiVE used to do back in the day.

Next steps are to:

• Finish playing around with the mods.
• Get an alpha or beta build to play around with and troubleshoot on my portable laptop server.
• Set up a play test on Llama.

Hopefully I'll be able to control my work environment enough to actually get something done over the next several weeks. Seriously, I could have an alpha build of something playable in a week or two if work wasn't sucking up so much time.

More to come!

I'm diving back into mission editing now that work has FINALLY settled back into some semblance of normalcy. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to play in a month or two. It may take longer just because I'm getting my feet wet again after having to lay off for almost a year.

I also haven't decided what exactly I want to build. More to come as I figure that out.

I'm still leaning towards developing an Antistasi/KP Liberation style scenario. It's likely to be heavily influenced by the evolving tactics, strategy, and geopolitical implications of the current Ukraine/Russian war.

That said, though, there's another option that I've thought about off and on for a long time. If I can ever figure out how,  I would LOVE to build a campaign based upon a series of scenarios in which the history of completed missions informs what happens next. The capability would appear to be baked into Arma's DNA going all the way back to the OpFlash SP campaign.

Although that campaign was pretty linear because it was mostly meant as a teaching tool, it actually had a couple of points where there were different impacts depending upon the outcome of previous missions.

One I remember in particular was a mission where the SpecOps character, James Gastovski, had to take out some attack helos sitting in an improvised forward air base that was hidden in a forest clearing. Your very next mission in the campaign was as the tank commander, Robert Hammer. If you didn't succeed in finding and destroying the helos, you had to face them in that mission. That sure made it a lot harder to complete! 

Anyway, the notion of that sort of persistence between missions really appeals to me. I think there are some interesting options that could be introduced. I would love to stretch the model out if I can figure out how to do it. For example:

• Maybe make a mini-mission where players vote on which scenario to play next?
• Build a high level map display so players can influence the operational tempo by picking different objectives?
• Force campaign progression down certain paths by limiting resource availability?

Not typically the kind of thing one finds on an Arma server, so maybe it's not doable. Either that, or nobody bothered to figure it out because it's a silly notion in the first place.

I'm a looong way from my home network at the moment so playing isn't really an option for me for at least a week. That said, though, I have enough of an Internet connection that I can at least do some basic maintenance.

Arma 3
IP: 216.105.171.156:2302
Name:
   =JpS= Jackpine Savages Llama is Reborn!The leading spaces should put it towards the top of the server list if you're just sorting by name.

• All installed mods have been updated.
• Currently running the default configuration so any default or loaded scenario can be voted on and played.

Arma Reforger

IP: 147.124.197.80:2001
Name:
!     =JpS= Jackpine Savages Llama is Reborn!Again, the exclamation point and leading spaces should put it towards the top of the server list if you're searching by name.

• Currently running the new Combat Ops mode on the new Arland map.

I'm also diving back into mission editing now that I FINALLY have some free time. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to play in a month or two. I'm just getting my feet wet again after having to lay off for almost a year, though. See my post in the Missions board if you're interested.

Good news: 2 servers up, one for Arma 3 (216.105.171.156:2302) and one for Arma Reforger (147.124.197.80:2001). 

Bad news: Work has been kicking my ass since last April. Outside of the LAN party last summer I have not had the time or the energy necessary to maintain them.    Fortunately, it looks like things are finally returning to a much saner pace.

I'm off for essentially the latter half of December. I'm looking forward to take some time fine tune both of them.

BTW, co-op options for Arma Reforger are improving quite a bit. In addition to the Game Master mode, there are any number of co-op missions in the Workshop. In addition, the latest release of AR has added a new albeit small island, a new official co-op mode, and what sounds like some pretty decent quality of life improvements to the editor. Hopefully those changes to the editor will make a lot easier to build and publish missions.

I finally got around to buying this game and I've been grinding through it. Made it up to level 21 as a gunner and thought, "This would be a lot more fun with a couple of people." Any time you see me on, feel free to join in!

It's currently running Conflict, the default Capture the Island mode. It's advertised as !    Llama, Home of the =JpS= Jackpine Savages clan. If you prefer a direct join, the IP address is 147.124.197.80  port 2001.

Don't forget to mark it as a favorite!

UselessFodder (love his handle, btw  ) has put together a basic tutorial for using the Arma Reforger editor.


He also includes links to a whole bunch of resources that he either dug up or created on his own as he was researching the topic. Well worth a look.

Still running map voting rather than a specific mission. I verified that the missions included with the DLC are loading. I don't own it, though, so I can't tell you if they are working correctly.