Griffins MP Campaign: Remastered

[UncleStains]

Awesome! I'm in charge of making a weekly training mission for our squadron, so this will take a load off of me! 

[Mistermann]

12 minutes ago, UncleStains said:

Awesome! I'm in charge of making a weekly training mission for our squadron, so this will take a load off of me! 

How big is your squadron?  Like Dagobert's original version, the remastered edition plays the Griffins as a 4-ship unit.  That means a max of 8 players if you're multi-crewing the Apache.  My experience was with a total of 3 pilots all in their own Apache.  I'm sure it'd be a blast with 4 multi-crew'd gunships.  Regardless, best of luck.  I hope you enjoy it.

[UncleStains]

We have 4-8 show up on any given night, so this sounds perfect. I will certainly report back. The only issue is I'm not sure if everyone in the squad has the PG map.

[Mistermann]

6 minutes ago, UncleStains said:

We have 4-8 show up on any given night, so this sounds perfect. I will certainly report back. The only issue is I'm not sure if everyone in the squad has the PG map.

Well if your guys are Hornet pilots, there's an AWESOME MP campaign from Jenson that I linked in one of the early posts of this thread.  It takes place on the PG map too.  Lot's of goodness there.  And it's currently on sale for 50% off. 

[UncleStains]

My squad is all set to run M01: Snake Run tonight. I noticed that the flight plan table on page 2 of the the M01 briefing document appears to be copied over from M00. 

[Dagobert666]

On 6/14/2024 at 1:49 PM, Mistermann said:

Glad you got it mostly sorted out @Gideon312.  That convoy mission is one of my favorites.  

I dug into the mission settings from the original campaign as well as the remastered and they are both set the same way.  Easy comms is OFF, but not enforced in the mission.  If people have their gameplay Presets set as you see below, they are going to inherit the comms setting from the mission.  In this case, easy comms will be disabled and you'll need to use RAlt+\ to bring up comms in the air.

Personally, my recommendation is simply to bind the Apache PTT for comms and forget about using the \ key completely. 

This is how I have had the Apache setup for ages and why I never encountered this anomaly during testing.  I do believe the radio has to be powered for it to work, however.  So power it on before talking to ground crew.

I will update the FAQ and add a note to all mission downloads in an effort to avoid this confusion in the future. 

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

 

 

16 minutes ago, UncleStains said:

My squad is all set to run M01: Snake Run tonight. I noticed that the flight plan table on page 2 of the the M01 briefing document appears to be copied over from M00. 

Remember, once you are in the air there is only one way to communicate with the convoy in M01

[UncleStains]

Ran M01 as a fully crewed 2-ship last night. All had a blast! Thank you to everyone who had a hand in creating this. My only issue was we didn't get to hear the final voiceover from Raptor. We parked on the ramp at Lar but maybe we were too far from the trigger? Overall, awesome work and we will be running the rest of the campaign as training over the next few months.

Spoilers start here:

That little encampment right at the start of the canyon nearly did one of us in, great placement!

[Devil 505]

3 hours ago, UncleStains said:

Ran M01 as a fully crewed 2-ship last night. All had a blast! Thank you to everyone who had a hand in creating this. My only issue was we didn't get to hear the final voiceover from Raptor. We parked on the ramp at Lar but maybe we were too far from the trigger? Overall, awesome work and we will be running the rest of the campaign as training over the next few months.

So glad to hear others are enjoying this campaign now.

[Mistermann]

16 hours ago, UncleStains said:

Ran M01 as a fully crewed 2-ship last night. All had a blast! Thank you to everyone who had a hand in creating this.

Great to hear.  This one is a fun one that can get out of control a little if your group gets a little too aggressive.  Seen many a smoking hulking Apache wreck during Snake Run.

16 hours ago, UncleStains said:

My only issue was we didn't get to hear the final voiceover from Raptor. We parked on the ramp at Lar but maybe we were too far from the trigger?

That's strange.  I am going to put a spoiler tag on some details below

Spoiler

The Lar Airbase LZ trigger zone is pretty darn big.  You didn't miss it.  Some other condition must be causing a challenge. 

-  Did you guys get a radio call from Blowfish saying they made it to the "Green Zone"?

-  Did the suicide truck bomb kill any of your trucks?

There are 4 possible endings

1) Convoy Survives + Trucks Survive + All ORIGINAL REMAINING Apaches (not the backups) land at Lar [Triggers Raptor_Success.ogg voiceover] 

2) Convoy Survives + Trucks Don't Survive + All ORIGINAL REMAINING Apaches (not the backups) land at Lar [Triggers RaptorPartialSuccess.ogg voiceover]

3) Convoy Doesn't Survive + All ORIGINAL REMAINING Apaches (not the backups) land at Lar [Triggers Raptor_Fail.ogg voiceover]

4) Convoy Doesn't Survive + All ORIGINAL REMAINING Apaches (not the backups) land at original FARP [Triggers Raptor_Fail.ogg voiceover]

You need at least one ORIGINAL Apache airframe in game for the voiceovers to work.  I'll update the FAQ on the first page with this little nugget.

16 hours ago, UncleStains said:

Overall, awesome work and we will be running the rest of the campaign as training over the next few months.

Outstanding.  Happy to give you and the squadron some quality DCS experiences.

Edited July 5, 2024 by Mistermann

[UncleStains]

Spoiler

In our playthrough, all original Apaches survived and the convoy didn't even get a scratch. We did get the message from Blowfish releasing us to go home. 

I know how tricky the DCS mission editor can be!

[UncleStains]

Ran M02, the Blackhawk down one, with 2 and half crews last night. That was a tough one! While none of our Apaches were damaged, the convoy got obliterated by a T-55 on the way out of town. I wish I could have told Blowfish to exfil south, the way they came in, instead of heading west through the city!

Once we established that nobody was shooting at us, we hovered along the ridge southeast of town. In hindsight, we should have spread out more on the east side and chosen a higher altitude. Since we were bunched up and low, we didn't have great visibility around and between buildings. We also didn't coordinate fire well or split up the town between units. We had some delays setting up our squad datalink during startup, so maybe we arrived too late anyway? Does the convoy trigger at mission start or does it wait for you to fly over?

The voiceovers made our failure a real punch in the gut. We were much more invested than the generic training missions I make. Overall a good learning experience, which is exactly what I wanted for weekly training.

We are going to continue running the campaign and will revisit this mission when we're done.

[Mistermann]

1 hour ago, UncleStains said:

Ran M02, the Blackhawk down one, with 2 and half crews last night. That was a tough one! While none of our Apaches were damaged, the convoy got obliterated by a T-55 on the way out of town. I wish I could have told Blowfish to exfil south, the way they came in, instead of heading west through the city!

Oh hate hearing that!  BUT ... its great to hear my conditional ending voiceover worked.    There's a lot going on in that mission and its easy for something to sneak in and ruin your day like that.  

1 hour ago, UncleStains said:

Does the convoy trigger at mission start or does it wait for you to fly over?

Convoy triggers when you're out near town.  Occurs when you hear the Raptor VO out near town.

1 hour ago, UncleStains said:

The voiceovers made our failure a real punch in the gut. We were much more invested than the generic training missions I make. Overall a good learning experience, which is exactly what I wanted for weekly training.

We are going to continue running the campaign and will revisit this mission when we're done.

Love hearing this @UncleStains!  That's exactly what I was going for with the VO work I did.  It took forever for me to write and then record all that content.  Glad your group is enjoying it!

 

 

[Dagobert666]

I also think that this mission is one of the hardest.

 

Not because of the enemy firepower, which isn't that strong.

But the city is so winding and confusing.

You almost never have a line of sight. At anything... that's the challenge of the mission. Seeing the enemy at all.

[palerider37]

Love this mission series gents, thanks Dagobert666 and Mistermann.  My community fly's them every Sunday. Next week is Mission 02: Broken Wing.

Thanks for all the hard work that goes into such a great mission. 

[Antix70]

My group is also enjoying this campaign as well! M02 was quite an order for us as well. 3 apaches with crew finally did the job though.

Can't wait to get to the next mission when we meet up again.

[Antix70]

Are the kneeboards wrong for the M04_Steeplechase_v1.0 mission?

It says the Mansion is at Waypoint 6, when it's actually at Waypoint 7?

[Mistermann]

Actually I never ever used the kneeboards and didn't even realize they were there.  They appear to be pretty simple renditions of the mission brief. I am going to remove them from the downloads to avoid confusion until I can update them.  Looks like M04-M09 have kneeboards from the original campaign.  These should be ignored.  This is especially true for M05 (Moonlight) as the entire mission was rewritten and won't match the original even remotely.

For those that already downloaded, you can simply delete the KNEEBOARD folder from the MIZ files of missions M04-M09.

For those that don't know - the MIZ file is just a ZIP file with an extension the mission editor recognizes.  Open the MIZ file with your favorite zip tool and delete the KNEEBOARD folder.  That's all you need to do to remove the bogus kneeboards.

Edited July 29, 2024 by Mistermann
added bolded note on MIZ files.

[Antix70]

On 7/29/2024 at 4:26 AM, Mistermann said:

Actually I never ever used the kneeboards and didn't even realize they were there.  They appear to be pretty simple renditions of the mission brief. I am going to remove them from the downloads to avoid confusion until I can update them.  Looks like M04-M09 have kneeboards from the original campaign.  These should be ignored.  This is especially true for M05 (Moonlight) as the entire mission was rewritten and won't match the original even remotely.

For those that already downloaded, you can simply delete the KNEEBOARD folder from the MIZ files of missions M04-M09.

For those that don't know - the MIZ file is just a ZIP file with an extension the mission editor recognizes.  Open the MIZ file with your favorite zip tool and delete the KNEEBOARD folder.  That's all you need to do to remove the bogus kneeboards.

 

Well that's good to know. : )

 

[Antix70]

Ok, I found it, In Moonlight, the voiceover audio is CORRECT, the text transcript output is incorrect.

This is captured by Open Kneeboard

[Mistermann]

Great find, @Antix70.  I'll get the text updated to match the voiceover. 

That feature isn't something I thought many would use, so I am glad to see someone that does.  I've never been one who liked the walls of text on screen when voiceovers played.  But is nice to have the message history there in case players want/need to look back at what was said.  I feel I came up with a decent compromise by finding a way to send the text to history, but not have it appear on screen.  I am working on a Kiowa experience modeled after this and thus far haven't incorporated this feature.  I may decide to go back and add it.

How is your group liking the overall experience?  You're more than half way through at this point, so congratulations on making it this far.  Moonlight (M05) is one of my favorites along with Broken Wing.

 

[Antix70]

12 hours ago, Mistermann said:

Great find, @Antix70.  I'll get the text updated to match the voiceover. 

That feature isn't something I thought many would use, so I am glad to see someone that does.  I've never been one who liked the walls of text on screen when voiceovers played.  But is nice to have the message history there in case players want/need to look back at what was said.  I feel I came up with a decent compromise by finding a way to send the text to history, but not have it appear on screen.  I am working on a Kiowa experience modeled after this and thus far haven't incorporated this feature.  I may decide to go back and add it.

How is your group liking the overall experience?  You're more than half way through at this point, so congratulations on making it this far.  Moonlight (M05) is one of my favorites along with Broken Wing.

 

I absolutely LOVE the way you've done it.

They're mostly night missions! A wall of white text on the screen would be blinding!

Everyone, if you're not using Open Kneeboard (https://openkneeboard.com), you're missing out. VR or NOT. Even if you don't have a wacom tablet (but come on, it's $40)!

Alternatively, there is always the message history, but I can simply look down at my knee, and see what I need at any moment.

[Antix70]

12 hours ago, Mistermann said:

How is your group liking the overall experience?  You're more than half way through at this point, so congratulations on making it this far.  Moonlight (M05) is one of my favorites along with Broken Wing.

We're having a LOT of fun. The missions are very engaging, not too easy, not too hard. Broken Wing was one that we HAD to have others join us in order to pass it, alone we kept running out of ammo, maybe because we suck, but still! It was better with more folks anyway. We had 3 64's the night we finally passed it. We aren't always able to have others join us, so it's nice when we can complete a mission with just myself and my front seater.

The ONLY thing I would suggest is not content based, but technical. It would be cool if when you finish the mission, it pulls up the next mission in the server queue. As it sits now, I have to pull up the server GUI and select the next mission. Not a huge pain, but I understand that it could be triggered in the miz. But don't remove the F10 START MISSION requirement.

Content wise, I'd suggest that the LZ is clear F10 command be automatically sent to the blackhawk when all enemy in the zone are destroyed. I often forget to check the F10 menu for new commands that show up.

There's probably more, but just little nit picks, etc.

[Mistermann]

11 hours ago, Antix70 said:

We're having a LOT of fun. The missions are very engaging, not too easy, not too hard. Broken Wing was one that we HAD to have others join us in order to pass it, alone we kept running out of ammo, maybe because we suck, but still! It was better with more folks anyway. We had 3 64's the night we finally passed it. We aren't always able to have others join us, so it's nice when we can complete a mission with just myself and my front seater.

Totally understand.  I'm a little envious of the multi-crew element you're using.  My group all fly with George as CPG which comes with its own set of challenges.  But it ensures we have enough ordinance for the job.  I can see how that mission might challenge a solo ship.  If memory serves me, M07 (Seraphim) has a lot of targets and will likely overwhelm a single ship without Rearming (which is supported in that mission)

11 hours ago, Antix70 said:

The ONLY thing I would suggest is not content based, but technical. It would be cool if when you finish the mission, it pulls up the next mission in the server queue. As it sits now, I have to pull up the server GUI and select the next mission. Not a huge pain, but I understand that it could be triggered in the miz. But don't remove the F10 START MISSION requirement.

Now that feels well beyond my ME skills.  I am pretty much limited to what I can do outside of scripting.  You're correct in that I could offer a "load next mission" option after landing.  I may look into that for future work.  BUT, I do have a solution for you that can be done within the cockpit.  I use this on my server and load missions from within game quite often.  It sounds like you may be the squadron's "server guy".  If so, have you looked at this server mod called SLMOD?  

This is from DCS veteran Grimes.  I'd encourage you to check it out.  There's a "load mission" feature that allows you (or anyone you authorize) to load different missions from within game.  Pretty handy.  I've run it for years and never had a single problem.  It also keeps some cool statistics about player stats too.

 

11 hours ago, Antix70 said:

Content wise, I'd suggest that the LZ is clear F10 command be automatically sent to the blackhawk when all enemy in the zone are destroyed. I often forget to check the F10 menu for new commands that show up.

There's probably more, but just little nit picks, etc.

Love it.  That's a good suggestion.  I don't recall why I didn't just do that to begin with... maybe that's how Daggobert's version handled it originally?  There may be some random elements that could happen that made the triggers more difficult to pull that off.  I don't really recall TBH.  Keep the feedback coming, it is most appreciated.

 

[Mistermann]

Corrected the voiceover and voiceover text in M05 reported by @Antix70.  Link in OP.

[Dunska]

@Mistermann - just finished this remastered campaign with a friend in co-op.  Great fun - thanks again for doing this and thanks to @Dagobert666 for the original campaign.