Diving Under Water

[Feint 137]

Oh looks like a blue shark. Really like this concept Feint, implementing the system so you cannot drop your weaps while diving would be cool.

Not sure if its been asked that i can see but when the player leaves the water, what uniform will the player be using?

Regards Jeza

I have a fix from SLX that prevents equipment loss for all units while the underwater module is syncronized with a unit. I've heard arguments on both sides of the issue. But a Navy Seal, with a million dollars in training, shouldn't drop his NV goggles after 5 minutes and 15 seconds. I'm sure it happens IRL, but not in my mod.

No clothing changes. There is a tutorial somewhere on here on how to make it appear to have a clothing change. Other mods have done it with changing out weapons attachments, changing helmets and stuff. It's a nice idea but beyond the scope of this project, I'm afraid. Thanks for the nice comments. :) You will be able to stand up in some boats though. Like, you can stand up in the CRRC, in the back of the fishing boat (but not in the drivers wheelhouse/nest whatever).

[hcpookie 3770]

Awesome mod indeed!

There are several underwater anti-personnel weapons to consider. Some of them can probably be imitated by adding new ammo to existing grenade launchers. Imitation may be as simple as a grenade launcher that has a 10-second ? delay before exploding to imitate the depth charge.

The Russians have several interesting anti-personnel GLs for anti-scuba applications such as the DP64:

http://www.zid.ru/en/products/military/dp64.html

The APS underwater rifles are essentially large dart guns that they claim to have good results with out to about 100 yards due to the stability from the length of the "darts":

http://www.tulatoz.ru/en/milaps.html

The newer "ASM" seems to be a dual-purpose gun that can shoot standard 5.45x39 rounds above water, while keeping the ability to shoot the "darts" below water:

I'm not sure whether normal in-game weps behave differently against underwater targets.

What about the little self-propelled underwater torpedo boats? Only one I found info about was the "stingray underwater scooter". Would those things be considered "usable" in the game?

[Feint 137]

@hcpookie Thanks for the ideas and enthusiasm! Right now, there's a limitation with weapon use while swimming. Basically it's something like, "can pull trigger = no" set on the individual swimming animations. Of course, this can be changed, but then current swimming animations have rifles slung over the shoulder so you'd be shooting from your back and that would be weird. :)

So adding weapons like rifles would mean adding new animations and I'm already on the deep end of what I have to do to release this by my target launch date. Plus I have no current experience with creating new animations and with my bad luck with writing configs, I think I'll leave that to others for the time being.

[therev709 10]

The possibilities of this mod are going to be endless! I can't wait to use this in my future projects, I'm already planning a few scenarios around it :D

[Feint 137]

Thanks USRanger709. I hope it lives up to everyone's expectations. :)

QUICK UPDATE: I have finished the main functionality of both oxygen loading and nitrogen loading at varying depths. Now there are realistic limits on diving.

For example, depending on what type of air you are breathing (selectable in user config), if you dive to a depth where your ppO2 rises to 1.6 bars, and you stay there for more than 45 minutes, you die of oxygen toxicity. This is meant for people using the 100% oxygen LAR V rebreather but also works for SCUBA divers.

Also, if you dive to a depth where your ppN2 rises high enough and long enough for you to require a decompression stop (3 minutes at 3-4 meters), and you DON'T do that decompression stop, you will die of decompression sickness (DCS, aka the bends). This is meant for the SCUBA divers.

So far you can dive with the following gasses:

• 100% oxygen
  
• NITROX I
  
• NITROX II
  
• HELIOX28
  
• HELIOX21
  
• TRIMIX
  
• AIR
  

All of these gasses offer different advantages and disadvantages. If you want to dive deep for a long time, pick a mix with low oxygen and low nitrogen like Heliox21. If you don't want to have to worry about doing a safety stop, use 100% oxygen. But stay shallow or you'll die of oxytox.

The nitrogen tissue loading isn't perfect. A 3 minute deco stop at 3-4 meters will basically reset your nitrogen loading. I did this for gameplay reasons. I figure people don't want to sit at a deco stop for 25 minutes if they dove on Nitrox II down to 34 meters for an hour.

I'm still working on finishing up the LAR V rebreather scripts and I need to finalize details on the diving computer for the SCUBA diver before I give it over to Defunkt to make some dialogs. (Thanks Defunkt! - maybe by Monday night I'll have something to give you :confused::eek:).

Other items I've incorporated:

• "Wet" post processing visual effects
  
• D.E.A.D. (diver emergency ascent device)
  
• Dive Light (kind of sucks :( )
  
• B.C.D. calibration (buoyancy compensator device)
  
• "Dive Time" (total time under water)
  
• Realtime ppO2 and ppN2 readouts
  
• TLAD indicators (time left at depth)
  
• Realtime NOAA O2 and N2 time limits (based on NOAA dive tables)
  
• Max Depth reached
  
• Decompression Ceiling (the depth you can ascend to safely to decompress before ascending to the surface - if you don't, you get 0.9 damage from Decompression Sickness)
  
• Cylinder Pressure monitor
  
• Breathing time remaining
  
• Heading indicator
  
• Battery level indicator
  
• Custom sounds
  
• TLBGs - Tissue Loading Bar Graphs for both N2 and O2 which light up as your nitrogen or oxygen uptake increases
  

Edited April 25, 2011 by Feint

[b00ce 160]

Holy shit, that's insane. Great work.

[Laqueesha 474]

Looking good! Makes me even more excited for this addon. ;)

[ProfTournesol 956]

Opening ArmA2 new frontiers

[DaveP 66]

Fuck me that's awesome, great to see things incorporated in to the game in ways that are totally novel (lest we remember all the past attempts at making divers using submerged vehicles and the like)

[dissaifer 10]

wow that is a lot of work and that pic looks amazing!

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Well done on your work so far, mate, that's awesome!

[Defunkt 431]

Believe I've figured out how to add additional 3D models into the HUD (in the same fashion as the compass/watch).

[Feint 137]

Believe I've figured out how to add additional 3D models into the HUD (in the same fashion as the compass/watch).

That's great news! I'm going to have eightball and ADO GMC contact you for the info. Thanks for your hard work. I'm sending you a PM in a few minutes.

EASTER UPDATE:

• I've converted the "dive light" into a "chemlight". Woo hoo! Much more logical-looking now. I think it looks good. There's an issue with the light disappearing depending on view distance. This is something I know the ACE people figured out how to solve. I'll see if I can create a workable solution that doesn't require massive coding and time and math skills I lost years ago.
  
• I've finalized the main functionality of the dive computer - handing it off for dialog creation now
  

By the way, for clarification, the above screenshot was edited in Photoshop (I added the "rays of light"). I've played around with using ppEffects to change the way the water looks while underwater. Currently, it's a pale blue color, depending on the time of day. I can add darkness depending on the depth you are at, but not sure I have time before my predicted release date. I have played around with changing the contrast as well, but the results are mixed. Not happy with them at the moment.

Edited April 24, 2011 by Feint

[das attorney 858]

HI Feint,

It might be worth posting a couple of the underwater photos with ppeffects added as there's probably someone on the forums who can help you out with the settings.

BTW - Have you tried the ppViewer by Przemek Kondor?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=97622

[eightball024 10]

Hey, I'm eightball and I've been working on the tac-100 board and also the SDV (swimmer delivery vehicle, which is on the back burner at the moment). Heres the latest renders of the tac-100. Keep in mind none of this has been added in-game yet. I just finished the models a couple days ago and also lack the knowledge for adding stuff into arma2.

Here's the last render I did of the SDV, haven't worked on it in a couple weeks

[Feint 137]

HI Feint,

It might be worth posting a couple of the underwater photos with ppeffects added as there's probably someone on the forums who can help you out with the settings.

BTW - Have you tried the ppViewer by Przemek Kondor?

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?t=97622

I've been using a different tool for pp effects, but that one looks pretty cool. Thanks for the link! (: <--upside down smiley!

EDIT: wow, that is a useful tool. Really helps me understand what the controls are doing in realtime. Love it. Thanks again!

Edited April 25, 2011 by Feint

[Laqueesha 474]

Ooh! Some DSRVs! Nice. ;)

[Darkhorse 1-6 16]

Ooh! Some DSRVs! Nice. ;)

SDV (swimmer delivery vehicle)

DSRV = Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, AKA the last hope for the crew of a sunken submarine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swimmer_Delivery_Vehicle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Submergence_Rescue_Vehicle

OT: Looking good Faint. Is there a maximum depth, or can you go as deep as you want? (Knowing you may die, of course. :D)

[Feint 137]

OT: Looking good Faint. Is there a maximum depth, or can you go as deep as you want? (Knowing you may die, of course. :D)

There are several real-world limits to how deep you can dive that I have implemented. They are dependant (for now) on what kind of gas you are breathing. So for example, if you were breathing 100% oxygen, your partial pressure of O2 (the amount of oxygen being pressed into your blood and tissue) would skyrocket past 1.6 pretty fast, like around 20 feet of sea water (fsw). And once your oxygen loading reaches a value determined by the US Navy to trigger a "hit", or an "oxygen toxicity event", I have it set so the player dies. So on 100% O2, if you go below 20 fsw, you won't die right away. But the longer you stay down there, the higher your chances are of dying. Now, if you wanted to get around that limit and dive below 20 fsw, you could try breathing a different gas with less oxygen. Standard air for example is 21% oxygen, much lower. This will allow you to dive very deep with small risk of oxygen toxicity. However, there's a LOT of nitrogen in standard air (79%). So relatively soon, you will reach 100% tissue loading with nitrogen. Once that happens, you are stuck under water until you do a decompresion stop at 3 meters for 3 minutes when you are ascending. If you don't, you'll die or come close to dying once you surface above sea level.

Currently, I'm not simulating HPNS (high pressure nervous syndrome) or Nitrogen Narcosis. HPNS (think Coffee in The Abyss) comes when you dive very deep. In the real world, some gasses will help trigger it such as the helium/oxygen gases like Heliox. This I am still working on.

Nitrogen Narcosis happens when you start to dive on high nitrogen gas like air (79% N2) and you go below certain depths for a certain length of time. For example, there's the Martini's Law which basically says, for every 10 meters of depth, it's like drinking a martini. So if you are 30 meters down, you will be pretty smashed. Euphoria, vision effects, hallucinations. Difficult to simulate some of that stuff, but not impossible. You won't die, but maybe I could alter the readouts on the dive computer to be erratic. Some people get nitrogen narcosis and think they have plenty of air, then drown when they don't ascend early enough to do their decompression stop.

Anyway, like I said, I haven't implemented a nitrogen narcosis or HPNS effect yet. So there's an advantage if you breath one of the HELIOX (part helium, part oxygen) gases. You have low risk for oxtox, no risk for nitrogen effects (because there's no nitrogen in those gases). You SHOULD have a risk for HPNS below something like 300 fsw, but so far I haven't gotten around to simulating that. The oxtox and nitrogen loading scripts took about a week to write. I believe HPNS mostly hits down deep, so that shouldn't be too difficult to simulate. I have to do more reasearch to see what other drawbacks there are with using HELIOX gases. I know they are expensive.

Good news is, I read that it's possible to simulate camera shake when bombs land. So if I can adapt that, maybe I can make a player shiver and tremble with HPNS effects. I could also ramp up the wave post processing effects some of which personally make me sick to my stomach watching for just minute or two. Nausea is one of the effects. And the pp effects effect everything including your watch and compass, making them almost unreadable.

[Binkowski 26]

alright now this is cool. underwater splinter cell insertion?

[MichaelZFreeman 20]

New arma frontiers indeed. I like your work + nice model from eightball :D ! I put one of the dive screen shots up on my desktop.

Currently, I'm not simulating HPNS (high pressure nervous syndrome) or Nitrogen Narcosis. HPNS (think Coffee in The Abyss) comes when you dive very deep.

Hey yes, Coffey. I was thinking of Abyss like missions. There was also an old Unreal Tournament map where you start in a submerged sub and dive out the bottom down to a inhabited structure on the sea bed. Don't know if its possible to have underwater air masses or portals in the arma engine.

Edited April 25, 2011 by DJ_Barney

[eightball024 10]

That reminds me, it would be nice to have someone make an oil rig and do some kinda (COD?) insertion under it, swim to the bottom platform and infiltrate.

[Defunkt 431]

Mana Island (Fiji) has an oilrig: PIC

And Rocket/USEC released one for ArmA1 which probably works.

Edited April 25, 2011 by Defunkt
Added pictures.

[liquidpinky 11]

A whole new world of underwater maps is about to be opened up. :)

[raptor 6 actual 13]

Mana Island (Fiji) has an oilrig: PIC

And Rocket/USEC released one for ArmA1 which probably works.

A little off topic, but thanks Defunkt for pointing out that the island had an oil rig. I never would have tried the island out if you didn't mention it. Should go nicely with the diving addon.

Back OT- Feint, I have been reading all of the posts, but I'm not sure if I came up with the answer I'm looking into to. How complex is it for the novice mission maker to implement these features into their missions? Is it just a drop on the editor type thing or is it complex with multiple triggers and init strings?

Just thought that would be a good question to start off the day, lol. Love the work, keep it up.