Operation Flashpoint - Dragon Rising Island War 2017

Description
Island War 2017 is a mod for Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, created by Templar GFX Modding.
Description (In author�s own words):
Island War 2017 is full rebuild of the original Island War mission for Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising I produced back in 2009.
I worked on the original version for 2 years full time, and a further 2 years part time before shelving the project. With much more experience coding, and a revival of the Multiplayer aspect of Dragon Rising I decided to finish Island War once and for all.


Island War is essentially an Artificial Intelligence. The goal from the beginning was to take the already incredible Ai built into OFDR and layer a third, as-complex Ai on top to control what each group of soldiers does on the Island as a whole.

The result is Ai controlled enemy and ally armies unlike anything you have seen in a game before!

Each soldier is provided a complex reactive Ai by the core game itself. This as is extremely good at reacting to a situation by using what are called "playbooks". These are lists of orders to give themselves depending on the type of soldier they are, and the situation they are in.

Each Echelon (group of soldiers) also has a "playbook" which in a similar manner, tells the group they should do in what situation depending on who is in the squad.

This is where the Ai built into Operation Flashpoint Dragon Rising Ends. And it is, in my opinion, some of the most impressive Ai written for a first person shooter.
When the game came out however it is important to stress that development issues and a rushed release meant it was configured very badly, and did not work well. I fixed this myself with a modification called Ultimate AI in 2009.

Ultimate AI is just a reconfiguration of the built in Ai's setup to maximize their effectiveness. I have also upgraded UAI along with Island War with improved movement, healing, weapon usage, vehicle driving, flight behavior and a host of other areas.

Island War creates a final additional Ai for each echelon that is in play and is designed as a goal oriented situation-ally aware behavior system.

At all times each echelon remembers what it was doing last "update", what it is doing now and what it plans to do in the future. It takes this information each update along with all the information it can grab from the game engine about the current situation around it, and runs this data through an extremely complex logic system which shuffles information between past/current/future to come to a final decision as what to do at that very moment.

Rather than having the goal "capture the Skarinka", each Ai has a "home" and a "goal".
Locations that are under enemy control nearby effect the behavior of defenders for example, and naturally creates a situation where defenders gather and eventually attack that location (safest defense is a good offense!)


There are 15 goals that can be chosen from : Defend, Patrol, Roam, Travel, Advance, Attack, Defend Unit, Defend Player, Defend Self, Helicopter Attack, Passenger, Wait Until Bored and Moving for Orders

Each goal is associated to others, so a Defender may go on Patrol, but not start Roaming, unless it decides to not defend home anymore. This can be overridden by situational events such as losing control of a location will turn defenders into Attackers or Advancers depending on the situation.

In between each regular update, IWai can be updated by "Reactive events" which are instant adjustments to the current state of the AI only and are : Under Fire, Hit by fire, Suppressed, Pinned, Morale Break, Command Failure, Unit Death.
The IWai will react to these situation with their own behavioural matrix, but not effect the goal oriented decision making of the regular update. This creates fantastic situational diversity while keeping the flow focused on the objects.

Finally the AI is given a full communications and feedback system that give them over 300 unique sayings and a complete contextual target calling system to immerse you in the battles as the individuals around you fight for their lives!


Please Note that while almost complete, Island War 2017 is still in progress and not yet complete. There are still in a few odd behaviors that need fixing!



But Island War 2017 is not just a mission, it is also a pack of modification that improve the core game itself, and effect not only Island War, but any and all missions available for OFDR. They are :

Graphics Update
Improves graphical options in-game to give higher quality texture filtering, tree rendering, grass rendering, LOD detail levels and more resolution setup options.
Also reconfigures terrain texturing for a higher quality look

Lighting Update
Improves the weather setups to give greater weather variety and improve overall lighting quality in game. Also removes the heavy post-process color balancing employed by the original game

Ultimate AI 2017
Latest version of my AI rebuild with significant improvements to vehicle and weapon usage, as well as more realistic situational awareness and combat health. Also adjusts pathing and enabled cost-based pathing to be utilised by units which leads to much better chosen routes.
And of course Ultimate AI reconfigures the "Dispersion System" to create much more realistic damage and wounding from weapon fire while not going so far as to make things too difficult.

Visual Effects Update
Adds many additional impact and explosive effects to weapons that create long-term visual damage, smoke and fire effects that last for a very long time. Looks incredible!

Specific only to Island War is a special "Entity Database" built by the community, and then worked on by myself. This configures all the weapons and vehicles in the game to be as accurate to their real-world counterparts as possible, as well as significantly improving the health and stamina system to create a realistic damage with extreme realism. Some wounds just cannot be healed!
For installation instructions consult the readme file.