Reply With QuoteI miss these sessions but as I seem to be working most sat evenings its just really bad time zone scheduling. I enjoy the videos though.
Small-scale but fun session today: since it was just henke, Jeshibu and myself, we played Escape on the Chernarus map. We were on the run for most of it and ended up getting blown to bits in a small, unnamed seaside village, but it was intense and enjoyable. I'll upload an uncut video of our second attempt at the mission, since the first attempt crashed after about five minutes, producing some weird bugs:
(The strange streaking seems to be a problem with Vegas Movie Studio, since it wasn't in the original video. The truck suddenly flying past me at high speed, however, that was in-game.)
I miss these sessions but as I seem to be working most sat evenings its just really bad time zone scheduling. I enjoy the videos though.
Yeah, that is a shame. It's always fun to have you on one of the sessions. Here's hoping it'll work out again some time, because other days/times don't work as well for me.
Anyway, here's the video (uncut) of our longest escape attempt yesterday. I need to get better at spotting people in the grass, because I swear I nearly stepped on henke and/or Jesh several times without noticing them there on the ground while they were bleeding out.
Edit: I just found out that there's an option called "Wartorn" in the Escape options. If enabled, it will result in OPFOR (our captors) and BLUFOR (our side) engaging in occasional skirmishes, which would mean that the bad guys would be somewhat busy with other things than hunting us down and we might occasionally come across patrols that'd been killed. Next time we try to escape one of these maps, I'll try to remember to enable that function.
Last edited by Thirith; 6th Sep 2020 at 13:50.
Change of plans: Instead of Arma 3, we're running a SWAT 4 session this Saturday, though at the usual time (see the coop thread for more info). As I will be away for the next two Saturdays, the next Arma session will only be in October. (I hear that a Humvee roadtrip in Lythium is planned!)
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 3 October
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Since last Saturday's Arma session fell flat (and morphed into a SWAT 4 session) due to mod updates that were stuck in the Steam update queue, we'll try another one in two weeks:
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 17 October
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Remember to check your steam download screen beforehand! Since the pandemic lockdowns they've started spreading out download times, which might lead to an unexpected wait for the download to complete when trying to start the game.
Ooooooh. I'd noticed my downloads being a lot more spread out but didn't realize that was the reason.
I think it’s based on how regularly you launch games, so since we hadn’t played Arma in about a month, it didn’t think it was urgent.
Thanks to henke and Jeshibu for a fun session of Escape Chernarus, for once playing as the Russians. Spoiler: We failed to escape - but it was still a fun, intense mission. We laughed, we cried, we disconnected, we patched each other up and then (accidentally, he said) put a bullet in the chest of the one we just patched up. Good times!
I'll see that I can put together a video of the mission, and I'll plan another session in two weeks, probably. Watch this space for more info.
And here's the video of last Saturday's session. We may not have managed to escape, but we laughed, we cried and we wasted First Aid Kits on one another.
I'll be running the next Arma game in two weeks, on Halloween. Boo!
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 31 October
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Thanks to henke, Jeshibu and Malf for a fun session of shorter missions. We didn't necessarily do all that well in terms of friendly fire (or perhaps we did *really* well, depending on how you look at it), but we did take out a HVT in Lythium (just don't ask us about the base we were supposed to clear...) and we cleared the Finnish woods of Russians, so Finland is safe again.
I'll see that I can put together a video from the footage over the next couple of days. As far as the next Arma session is concerned, it'll be either on 14/11 or 21/11. I'll post an update once I've decided.
And here's the video of that first mission:
While it's a pretty unforgiving mission due to its lack of respawn, I could imagine doing the occasional trip to Lythium to try another one of the tasks. If I hadn't fucked up that trip to the mountain base so gloriously, it might've been a nice challenge - though I wouldn't necessarily want to do 2-3 hours of this mission.
I'll be running the next session in three weeks.
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 21 November
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Today's session (we played TRGM2, a randomly generated mission, on the Sahrani map) started off weird and frustrating, as I first crashed the transport helicopter just as we arrived near our first objective, my connection crapped out, and we generally died a lot, respawned at base 12km away and had to fly forever to join up with the others again. I also fell through floors a couple of time and ended up bleeding out inside a wall where corpsman Jeshibu couldn't reach me. Things did improve eventually, and it's always fun to hang out and be shot to bits with henke and Jeshibu.
I'll probably run two more sessions this year, in two and four weeks, but I'll confirm this in a few days.
What I forgot to mention: due to technical problems on my part, there won't be a video of last Saturday's game. In other words, there's no record of my inglorious crash early in the mission. The only two witnesses are henke and Jeshibu... Hmm. Oh, henke and Jesh, you guys feel like a helicopter ride?
Unless something gets in the way, I'll be running two more Arma sessions this year, on 5 and 19 December, and then we'll have a bit of a break from milsim tomfoolery.
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 5 December
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Thanks to henke, Malf and PigLick for a fun session! It was one of the weirder, more chaotic one, but we won one mission fair and square and one with surprisingly Hitman tactics: killing the hostage we were supposed to free, and then I dressed up as him and we drove to the extract point. The game didn't seem to be able to tell the difference.
I'll check out the video footage to see if I can put together a vid of one of the missions. Stay tuned!
And here's the video I put together of our first mission, which was clearing out an area in Fallujah. Unfortunately that's the mission where we didn't yet have PigLick on the team, but it's the one where I had the best footage. Sorry, PigLick, next time I'll make sure you'll get the fame and fortune you deserve!
And, as I've mentioned before, there'll be one last session before Christmas, followed by a break of a couple of weeks:
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 19 December
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Just finished the final Arma session of 2020, ft. henke, Jeshibu, Malf and Piglick (thanks, guys!). It was good fun, with relatively little in the way of bugs and aggravation. Two enjoyable sorties to Chernarus (the winter version), followed by trying to make it out of Tanoa alive. I'll try to make a video of the middle mission and post it over the next week or so.
Sadly, I've had some problems with the video - it seems that Shadowplay and Vegas Movie Studio don't always work well together, in particular since Shadowplay uses a variable frame rate. The video I started working on didn't properly syncronise the footage and the audio. I've tried to convert the resulting footage using Handbrake, but Movie Studio also doesn't seem to like the resulting m4v video. Right now it looks like I won't be able to do a video of the last session - which is a shame, because especially the middle mission (clearing out an area in a wintry Chernarus cityscape) was quite neat. I'm thinking that from next time I'll try to use OBS Studio instead to capture the session. In the meantime, if anyone's got any suggestions how I can make things work, I'm happy to hear them.
But, more importantly, when will we next head to the battlefield?
The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 9 January 2021
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
can we try and sort out the TFR issues I seem to be having before the next session? As much as I enjoy the silence, I long for your dulcet tones to soothe my "where the fuck do we go now" anxiety.
Absolutely! I’ll see that I can be there 10-15 minutes early on the 9th.
Update for everyone: there's a new version of Task Force Arrowhead Radio. It's listed as a beta version, but apparently it already works better and is more stable than the old version, so the makers recommend switching to this one. I have taken the old version out of the mod collection and added the new version, but it might take some tweaking, so I'll aim to have the servers up and running fifteen minutes before the game begins on 9 January. Here's hoping we can transition to the new version without too much hassle!
Edit: To help others with this, here's what I did:
- Download the new mod via Steam workshop.
- Launch Teamspeak 3, go to Options-->Addons, uninstall the old TFAR addon.
- Go to your TS3 addon folder (in my case, this was C:\Users\XXXXXXX\AppData\Roaming\TS3Client\plugins) and remove the TFAR dlls to prevent conflicts.
- Launch Arma 3 (just the launcher should be enough), remove the old TFAR mod from your list, add the new TFAR mod.
- Go to your Arma 3 directory's mod folder (...\Arma 3\!Workshop\@Task Force Arrowhead Radio (BETA!!!)\teamspeak) and launch task_force_radio.ts3_plugin.
Last edited by Thirith; 31st Dec 2020 at 05:45.
Done!
btw Windows pro tip: if you type %USERPROFILE% into Explorer it takes you to your current profile folder. So just paste in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\TS3Client\plugins and it'll take you straight to that plugins folder.
Fun but messy Arma session today, with Malf, Demagogue and (briefly) henke.
We ran into some issues with the new version of the radio mod; I'll try to find out for next time how to resolve them, and if this doesn't work we'll revert to the old version.
No video yet (I want to have everything working reasonably well before I do them again), but we had fun doing three short missions, one on Altis (clearing a village), one on Tanoa (finding some chemical weapons) and one on Takistan (securing some intel in an enemy base). As always, it was great fun to hang out and get killed horribly next to fellow TTLGers. I'll post something soon about when the next session will be, but right now I'm aiming at doing one in two weeks.
I'll do what I can to solve the TFAR problems until then, and I'll again be there fifteen minutes early on 23/1 to help people set up things, if necessary.The next Arma 3 coop session:
Date: Sat, 23 January
Time: 3-6pm UK time
As always, I'll be online a bit before 3pm to set up the server and check who's online.
Update: I've just tested the ACRE2 radio mod with Malf and it seems to work okay out of the box, so I'd suggest that we try that one to see how it works. I've added it to the mod collection already.
Installing it should be pretty simple: once you've downloaded the mod from the Steam workshop and launch Arma 3, the plugin installs itself - if you're logged in as an admin. (Malf didn't have to do anything in particular for it to work, but I had to launch Steam as an admin.) You will have to deactivate TFAR, both in the Arma 3 launcher and in the TS3 addons menu. Still, when Malf tested this with me, everything worked pretty much out of the box.
We have tried ACRE2 in the past, at which point we weren't entirely happy with its finicky realism (or is it?), but in its current version a lot of the things that bothered us can be tweaked or simply deactivated. Nonetheless, if we're not happy with ACRE2, we can always revert to the old TFAR mod - but I want to give this a try, since TFAR never worked 100% for everyone.
So, once again, my apologies for all the faff, but I'm cautiously optimistic about that one. If it works this well for everyone and even people in, say, Australia can hear us and talk to us, we should go with it. How does that sound for everyone?
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