Mission Total Randomization

[Gabreil]

In my pursuit to add some randomisation to my mission ive come across many videos and posts which explain how to achieve a lot of this...  What i havn't found is somethig that allows full randomisation.... so even the mission creator does not know where (and potentially what) will appear or when it will appear.   What do i mean by this...

On Mission start things like this will happen:

• At some time during the mission AI aircraft will spawn at random places on the map
• Unless engaged and destroyed, they will automatically disappear after... lets say 10 mins
• At another random time another AI (or multipes) will spawn 

I think you get my drift.    I'm certainly not a script writer... so the question is... Is there anything out there already that can create this scenario?    

[cfrag]

18 hours ago, Gabreil said:

Is there anything out there already that can create this scenario?

Yes, and it's not particularly challenging to do so - although it does requires some scripting, and it's easily is covered by most of the available scripting frameworks.

The reason why this subject doesn't come up often is a different one: A fully randomized mission as you describe isn't particularly interesting for players, as it places the element of random as its center feature, not strategy.

Below, I've thrown together a mission that should match your requirements. Total building time (using a tool called "DML", but any other should do the trick) was some 15 minutes. 

And yeah, it gets boring fast.

That being said, you could use the principles of that mission to add the element of randomization into your more interesting missions.

 

Max Random.miz

[Gabreil]

Wow!   thanks for the .miz.  Really appreciate it.   I was actually reading about DML last night.. was late but i sort of got the drift of it.   I did look at some of the many .miz files to figure out how they worked..   

I've run the mission a few of times..  

• On start it spawns 1x aircraft (which is random each time) -  What about more than one spawning.   i.e each mission start has a different amount?
• What detemines when they spawn - can that be random too rather than immediatly on mission start?
• And likewise on the despawn - can that be randomized?  - 

I do get what you're saying about randomness.   But the misson i'm building (well trying to) is mainly heli focused and the idea being that things can randomly appear that can impact the heli (CTLD/CSAR) task.  

Edited December 29, 2024 by Gabreil

[cfrag]

2 hours ago, Gabreil said:

What about more than one spawning.

The miz spawns new aircraft every 600-700 seconds (= 10 - 11.5 minutes), as per requirements

2 hours ago, Gabreil said:

What detemines when they spawn - can that be random too rather than immediatly on mission start?

Of course. The pulser (inside trigger zone "Bogey randomizer") gives the command for a new spawn cycle, the 'zeroPulse' attribute controls if there is a pulse at mission start. it defaults to "yes", so add an attribute, call it "zeroPulse" and set the value to "no" to wait 10-11 mins for the first spawn.

The pulser's "time" attribute (currently set 600-700) controls the time between spawn cycles, now set to 600 to 700 (randomized) seconds.

3 hours ago, Gabreil said:

And likewise on the despawn - can that be randomized?

Yes, but since that wasn't in the requirements, it would require some changes to the miz 

3 hours ago, Gabreil said:

But the misson i'm building (well trying to) is mainly heli focused and the idea being that things can randomly appear that can impact the heli (CTLD/CSAR) task.  

Perhaps have a look at the "CESAR in Caucasus" mission on ED's user files. It may give you some ideas.

[Gabreil]

thanks for the explanations.  

I've had a play around.   Increased the 1x Aircraft on a couple to 2 & 3 and that works nicely which is good.  And for testing i've lowered the 600-700 down lower to get a feel of what and when its doing things.  

I've played around the zeroPulse.   Not exactly sure what i'm doing!   Do i add "zeroPlus / no" to the end of what is already in the Bogey Randomizer zone or is it instead of the initial pulse! command?     Some have a ? and some !   I read they are input/output  but not got my head around how to use as yet.

Is the despawn something i could easily add to the existing .miz?    

 

 

 

 

[cfrag]

12 hours ago, Gabreil said:

Not exactly sure what i'm doing!

Not to worry. DML comes with some brief documentation and tutorials. All that pulser, rnd and cloner stuff is basic DML