Something New On The Northern Front

LoteZ has jumped the fence due to lack of interest and I couldn't persuade him. I blame myself for this, as the few sessions he's been in have been crap, to be honest. We've sent Stealth after him to beat him with a baseball bat. Please welcome Bonde though, who I will tute in basic tomorrow!

The day started off with battlefield theory with U_U, Quicky, Ices, h3adache and OFP-vet Redkid. Basically what I went through were the weapons, why we use them, how we use them and where they should be in the formation. Simple stuff but the lads were unserious and I had to shout at them and tell them to shape up. I am getting sick of the slackness and unseriousness coming down to the team sometimes, and I've noticed that it often appears whenever Quicky is around... Having a laugh is OK, but not when I'm trying to teach them why we are using the tactics that we use.

After that we headed down to Tyrone and tried to push further south, taking the hospital close to Gravette. I've noticed that the lads have serious spotting problems, as the recon team (Ices and Quicky) I sent down there were caught completely off-guard, while actually doing reconnaisance. What the hell? They were attacked and before the rest of the squad could respond they were dead. A quick offensive against the hospital ended in h3adache getting lost and me getting shot by a came-outta-nowhere Russian. OFP-vet Redkid and players h3adache and U_U falled back to Tyrone and ended the Op. Not a good Op at all.

Stealth joined, as well as OFP-vet Zsinjeh (aka Zsinj). Two rounds of Mass Assault (made by Redkid) ended with victory to my team (me, Ices, Stealth and during the first round; Quicky who crashed during the start of the second round) both times. On the picture, shoot-and-scoot with an AK74.

We booted up the training map one last time, now going through how to respond to contacts in an IFV. They learnt fast and it went well. A planned second attack on the hospital ended with a fierce defence in Tyrone. Redkid, Zsinjeh, U_U and Stealth managed to hold back after I had gotten blown up in the explosion of the Strf90 (IFV), along with gunner Quicky and driver Ices. They were eventually forced to pull back and we yet again lost all territory south of St. Phil and we have no longer got a Strf90.

I'm happy to announce that Stealth is getting better all the time. He's still at the bottom, but he's working his way upwards. Real-life military Zsinjeh even appluaded him when they got paired up during the last session. However, I'm looking serious on this wave of unseriousness and slackness in the crew. If it doesn't get any better, I'm going to take some serious disciplinary action and nobody wants that - including me. On the picture, Zsinjeh leading the debrief with U_U (furthest), Stealth (middle) and Redkid (closest).

Counter-Attack

I was about to go through a lot today. And I mean a lot. But it sort of went elsewhere, and ended up in something far more interesting than I first had planned.

We got off to a late start, not booting up the server until 20.00. This was because I were busy spreading The Word now during election times here in Sweden. I had some things to take care of, so I sent of today's players U_U, h3adache and Ices along with OFP-vet JW to set up a defensive perimeter. Lucky us that we did that, because the dynamic AI I had scripted had decided to throw a lot of heat our way. In my full-booked scheduele we only managed to squeeze in a bit of formations training between the hordes of T72s, Spetz Natz and crazed Russians. While doing a decent job on our defences, we got pushed back just east of St. Phil where we got ambushed by a team of Spetz Natz and got killed. On the picture, formations training.

Even though everyone did their best I was getting a bit tired of the lack of motivation in the people. So I decided to spice everything up a notch. I took five minutes and added a bunch of Russians everywhere south of St. Phil, and made them even more aggressive. I basically removed the safe-zone, including the airbase as an attack on the air-base was just a matter of time. And I told them that every piece of land we now lose is lost and every vehicle and weapon we lose are not coming back. We're fighting for a safe-zone here lads, and if we haven't got a safe-zone we won't have anywhere to train and then we won't be able to continue with the project. On the picture, a recently fought-off Russian advance on the airfield. OFP-vet Redkid as seen in the side-chat was split away from the rest of the team, guarding our Observation Post.

I immediately saw a boost in the fighting morale of the lads. We took back piece-by-piece of territory. Everyone really did their best, and no-one died as they were all pushing for a goal. The only casualties we had were a had-to-go by OFP-vet JW and an internet-crash by Ices. And I realized, that even though still lacking some of the skills of a 5 year old vet, and none of them being skilled leaders they are great players to have under one's command. They do what they are told, do it as best as they can and don't whine. They take their responsibility, their arches, and they are soon-to-be experts in formations. They can take orders and execute them without blinking twice. Often, I actually see the OFP-vets doing the complaining. It's almost like having a bunch of Semper Fi-Marines. I love it, I can't be happier with the results.

We managed to retake everything down to Tyrone, which is the new front-line. The mission lasted 2½ or 3 hours, I'm talking the mission here, not the session. We played that long without reassigning. Just a week ago I had to reassign every time someone was supposed to go to Meaux in a Tgb11 because he kept driving over someone else. They lasted 3 hours without a single one of them dying. If they were all OFP-vets I wouldn't be surprised, but they've played OFP for 2 weeks and they managed (although with help from OFP-vets) to take out two Russian platoons, around 60-80 men. In the words of Darth Vader; most impressive. They're not ready for me to unleash them yet, I still have to guard them, but damn, they're suprisingly good when I'm guarding them. On the picture, from left to right U_U with a Ksp90 and a Pansarskott M/86, me (dmakatra) with an AK5B and a Pansarskott M/86 and to the far right h3adache with a AK5 GRT with a GRG M/48 Koger. Redkid took the screen and together we were the last four to push all the way down to Tyrone which we are now proudly posing in.

Clear! *bzzmp*

Good news and bad news. The good news is that the reason this blog haven't been updated lately is because the project has been very slow. You can only do that much with a four-man team, and we haven't got enough people to scrounge up more than that. How is that good news? I've found more people.

The bad news is that these new lads aren't really the most interesting bunch of the lot. Nevermind that it took me several DAYS of replacements-hunting to find a few lost souls, most of them hasn't answered me for several days or suddenly remember that the summer break is coming to an end and that "I sorta forgot that, and now I know I haven't got the time". I've found two guys, Punkbuster92 and LoteZ that have been active enough to actually start the game. On the contrary, I've booted out DoGGo, uWiSH and Zorko for inactivity. I actually found Bravo, the poor fella had had some MSN-problems and didn't knew he could write an email or something notifying me. Well, we got his game sorted out but that was 2 days ago and I haven't seen him since...

And while this project is about fighting prejudice, the FragBite community where I recruit most of the people from, isn't really helping out. I am safe to say that my thread is one of the few, few threads that are actually interesting - yet STILL it keeps getting bumped off the first page within thirty seconds by threads like "What is your prefered sex style?" (and I fecking swear, 90% of those answering are virgins), "Look at this spider I found in my room!", "How do you style your hair?", not to mention the ever-so-intruiging-read "Most Beautiful Female Name" with over 3500 answers. What are they going to do with 3500 posts, discuss how the modern excess of Emmas affect the global market?

But today we actually got the stuff going. I taught LoteZ the basics, as well as Punkbuster92. LoteZ seemed pretty much uninterested, let's see what I can do about that. Punkbuster92 was pretty into it, but didn't have time to stay before we had an Op which was a shame actually. Well, we had one, which was just me and him but that wasn't a 'real' Op, just to show him how everything works. I got whacked by the artillery though and he made it home safe in one piece by piloting the chopper which I taught him earlier. Good stuff.

After that we had a few Ops, h3adache, Quicky and Ices being the players. A raid on a fuel depot went... crap, and it was about then I decided to cripple the enemy artillery a LOT as it simply wasn't fun getting cut up by artillery every bloody time you faced some Russians. They're smart enough as they are, the buggers got reinforcements scripts and the lot. Can barely take a piss in the enemy territory without getting overwhelmed by a platoon of mechanized infantry. On the picture, h3adache being picked up by Ices in the hkp9, after throwing a smoke to signal.

After the fuel depot raid we went over to practise interaction between different elements. The objective was to escort a Tgb1314 (Medic-truck) cross enemy territory. A hkp9 in the skies acting as eyes and a Tgb1111 armed with a GRSP (think Humvee with a Mk19 GL) as ground support. It went shit, as we got ambushed, and ambushed several times in a row. After a few tries I changed places with Ices as aerial scout and after that it went really well. They managed to get there in one piece with the Tgb1314, although the server crashed during the return. I was mighty impressed by how they acted against two Russian squads without me interfering. I was just observing them, giving each other cover fire and performing flanking attacks. Very well executed. On the right picture, h3adache with the Ksp90 (M249) giving covering fire to the flanking Ices and Quicky.

Once the server was back up we just decided to have a blast. I let them try out a jet fighter each in turn while I instructed the other two how to do corners in CQBs. Once everyone had tried out the jet, we just screwed around and had loads of fun to get to know each other a little better. We even talked a bit about having a LAN someday. Although the most interested guys (U_U, h3adache, Stealth, Ices and Quicky) really know each other and me well and we really have a blast I can't think stop thinking that this makes the replacements feel out of place and tossed into something where they feel neglected (spelling?). This is something I will work hard on the next few days.

Crashing like in a dogfight only with computers!

My PC has gone FUBAR on me. Again. No training today. I think I will have it sorted out until tomorrow. I hope.

Radio Check

No news about the project, but there's an interview with me in Tigershark's new OFP podcast, Radio Check. I'm about half-way through, but it's all great stuff, so check it out.

http://web.mac.com/jvanlint/iWeb/Radio%20Check/Welcome.html

I'm just about to boot up training now.

Frets on Fire

First of all (yes I know it's getting annoying with all the 'first of all's but it's the only way I know how to enter a text properly in English :P) I am to announce that I've taken the day off. This is because we've played like madmen for several days now. It might be entertaining for the lads who is still discovering new stuff, but I am getting desperately sick off the game at the moment and felt that I had to take some time off. I was actually suppose to work on the new training mission (with lotsa more features, a real nasty little thing which is interesting enough to be released to the public later on, but more on that another day) but got stuck on the silly little free game Frets on Fire. It's fun, it's fast and it makes you look cool.

Alright, you look quite silly having your keyboard in your lap and playing on it (sort of) like a guitar. But hey, at least now you get a chance to clean your desk. You can't imagine what sort of things I found under my keyboard. Y'know The Scream by Munch, the one that got stolen? I think someone hid it under a pile of crusts and another pile of dust. Anyway, have a go at it if you feel like you want nothing else to do than break your F1-F5 and Enter-keys:

http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/uv/fretsonfire/

About training yesterday, which we had, albeit very uninspired as I was getting short of ideas. All I've done is sleep, eat and play the latest days. If I got some time over it went to edit the map in some way. One of these little edits was the artillery system. Still a bit rough on the edges, I'm going to introduce a dialog into it as well, but those take time as well. Me not being an active scripter for well over a year doesn't help as I've forgotten everything (and lost all my scripts and resources due to system reinstall) AND I've barely scripted MP before. I suffer so much because of this I bet I could sell my life-story to some magazine and make millions. On the picture, introducing the artillery system to Ices (FO) and Stealth (RTO).

We had a few Ops, mostly focusing round utulizing the artillery system to the fullest potential. We got the hang of it eventually (my first time with the system as well so it was kind of a challenge for me too) and used it to bomb the hell out of a convoy, Morton and just about anything we could spot. I had to be off for half an hour because of Father Ted. Seriously, there's no better excuse to run off than Father Ted. Thank God for SVT, the only Swedish channel that don't show American brain-dead crap all day. Anyway, when I came back my screen looked like on the picture, which shows that they are not quite ready to be left alone, not even in OFP-vet JW's command.

Anyway, I rejoined and we had a few vehicle handling exerices and also practised how to change formations under fire. We also had a couple of rounds of Bjällbo and another similar mission called Guardsmen. They are getting better all the time, and even though I beat the hell out of them in Guardsmen they got me in Bjällbo. Although a monkey could get me in Bjällbo. I hate that bloody mission.

Back on the training map I reconed with the helicopter for a Shilka to go on a Shilka-hunt for. While I was gone (about 10 minutes, bloody Shilkas are randomly placed) the lads were misbehaving. They crashed vehicles, shot at each other, didn't obey Stealth's orders (he was in command at the moment) and generally acted like immature shitheads, to be honest. I was in a bloody bad mood and as I was saying, was getting pretty sick of the game so I wasn't really into playing at the moment. So I bursted out on Ices and Quicky, which I judged was misbehaving the worst according to what I heard on ventrilo and saw on the chat. On the good side, I think they are becoming good friends and that is always a good thing. But if this behaviour, which I also told them, continues I am going to boot them out of the project. That leaves us with about 5-6 active players and that isn't enough so that would mean the death of the project as well.

We rounded off the evening with parajumps/orientation. They're getting better, although when there's no clear landmarks like a town they still keep getting lost.

Gripping Reality

First off, sorry for not updating yesterday. My memory is a little foggy on what happened, but I remember us playing a lot of Ops on the training mission and teaching Bob the basics, as it was his first time. We had a go at convoy attacking, downed-pilot evacuation and a few basic take-and-hold Ops. Nothing new to report here really, except maybe Bob's progress, which I'm getting to later on. We also had a go at IFV's, although I'm not really experienced in that area so I don't feel I can tutor them any further than just introduction. I also introduced a few new updates, like enemy artillery, more vehicles/weapons and an enemy convoy driving round the island.

Today we've mostly been doing Ops. I taught them how to drive in a convoy (and how to drive at all), how to respond to fire when in an unarmoured vehicle, some GRT-training and a night behind-enemy-lines Op. They all performed as usual.

I think it's time for an overall update on the crew.

h3adache
I've put h3adache as leader a few times and he keeps getting better and better at it. I want to see his stuff more on the co-op missions although he rarely stays later than 23.00, which is about the time the co-ops start to roll in. He's the best if I am to choose one, although he's starting to lag behind the others as he isn't as fanatically active as some. I can't blame him. Some of us (including me) really need a life. On the picture is h3adache leading a patrol, now scouting the area ahead for possible routes.

U_U
Although not as good a leader, player or navigator as h3adache, he's very active and learns a lot. He has a way of getting unserious sometimes when I'm not looking and when there's that certain atmosphere of immaturety (new word?) in the air, which I'm not very fond of. But he usually snaps out of it if I tell him to shape up. He's usually very serious though, and he's a pleasure commanding.

Ices
Ices is good fun when there's a time, but he's the first one to get serious if going into field or having an excersise. It turns out my first thoughts of him were wrong, when I compared him to Quicky. He's not the guy that like to be in charge, although he likes control. Extremely independent and takes his own decisions without asking the leader where it is needed - which almost always turns out to be the correct decision. He's the guy that always have control, the guy that always points out the audio-contacts, the guy that always know where we are if the leader is in doubt, and the like. An excellent assisting leader, no doubt, probably the best assisting leader of the bunch. He's also quite active, often staying up until early in the morning and works well with anyone. His main problems concerns the use of ventrilo though, as I constantly have to tell him not to use ventrilo unless necessary to keep comms clear for the leader to use. I am however sure that we can work that little problem out.

Quicky
Quicky's the man in charge. Or he wants to be. Yesterday's co-op which didn't go as planned (too many people to command for a beginner, I think we were 7 or 8, including OFP-vets of course) scared him off a bit I think, although I bet he's willing to take charge in a few days again. If the guys get into the sort of democratic anarchy that I've talked about earlier, he's the guy that comes with most of the ideas, with Ices there to help him as an assistant leader in anarchy. He's probably the most active as well, and whenever I take the server down for a few minutes because of editing or eating or the like, he's always booting up the editor and having a go at the choppers. He loves vehicles. Really, he do. I bet he'd marry the Hkp9 if only he was 18+. On the picture, a screenshot from the co-op mission he was in charge of. Getting ready to assault the bad-guys at a camp. The whole thing was confusing, and people didn't quite have an idea what to do. When Quicky died I took charge and sorted it out.

Stealth
OK, what bothers me with this project isn't the two guys that never show up, it's Stealth. It bothers me that I can't get him to improve as fast as the others. He's active, always playing if he can and leaves at about 01.00-02.00. And, pardon the expression, schoooo schweeeet. Seriously. It's like a teddybear underway into puberty or something. He's always up for everything and rarely complains nowadays. I've actually managed to fade away his impatience quite nicely. He's so up and happy, all the time, even when I critizise his poor playing. It's like seeing a kid helping an old lady over the street, and accidentally gets her killed. He means so well, but it ends up so bad because he always screws up. To be honest, I doubt he has the mental capacity to play Flashpoint. He can't use degrees, not even when in a safe-zone. He can barely tell the clock and his way of navigating is poor. I was close of bursting into tears during a night-op when it first took him fifteen minutes to find his position, and then got lost again when he headed for rendevouz with where the rest of the team was. Still, he's learning. Very slowly, but learning. But it feels so wrong seeing the other guys getting the hang of whatever we were practising after a few tries when Stealth is still struggling hard with what I've taught him before. Even the basic stuff I taught him his first few hours he's still struggling with. And the worst part is he loves to take command, which often ends up with a big boost in the Everon Mourge-market. Like making people take GRG-Koger (extra ammo for the AT-Launcher we use) and forget to tell someone else to take the GRG-Launcher.

DoGGo & uWiSH
I haven't really played with them a lot. They rarely show up for training, especially uWiSH. DoGGo pops up from time to time but we're talking one hour at a time here, maximum. As far as I know, they do what they're told, although they haven't become as scared as the people above so they often get confused during routine things.

Bob
Bob is a replacement that got unlucky because he didn't get the game running until yesterday training. All the stuff that the others haven't really learnt by me telling them as part of training but stuff they've learnt by me telling them how to do this and that while in the field he doesn't have a clue of. Maybe things would've been different if he had showed up the first or second day. Maybe not. I can't quite put my thumb on him yet. Sometimes he's doing what he's told with no comments, and while not capable of doing anything special yet, he's helping out with AK5-fire on the battlefield. Yet sometimes he's your average CS-kiddie. Immature and impatient. I need more time on this one.

The two other guys
I haven't heard from them in ages, don't think they've even installed the game. It's too late to bring in replacements now though so I'll just leave them be.

The most interesting is the impact on their lives. Quicky is mad about the game, if not playing MP with the lads he's having a go toying round in the editor. Ices, as routined as he is in the game, is starting to talk like on ventrilo in real life. He told me that he's found himself give directions in degrees or using N, W, S or E when talking to people in real life. U_U was playing a bit of CS, but was getting angry that he kept pressing V (iron sights) when he was trying to kill someone. And even though they don't quite get all the discussions and jokes I have between some OFP-vets they've started to bond and they are also making some inside OFP-jokes. I have no doubt that some of these lads will give up CS once the project is over and stay Flashpointers. They've made friends with several OFP-vets, mostly Redkid (aka Redkid Joker) and JW.