Diving Under Water

[AndrewsRG 22]

looking real nice bro. can't wait to use this.

[short_German 1]

This looks amazing and im realy looking forward to it especially as i am a diver myself and have always been disappointed that there are no possibilities to dive in arma2 and that you loose your kit when swimming which makes a navy seal approach infiltrating teritory by water i.e. walking out the river in a swamp in south america impossible

but pleas tell me that it wont require ace because my computer jst wont runn ace at all 4 some reason i tried reinstalling ect :(

[Feint 137]

@short_German, ACE isn't required.

So I just discovered in the most non-subtle way that fishing boats can set off mines. I found this out when I went to attach a mine to a boat and when I got within 5 meters or so, it exploded. The only route I can think of is to make a new vehicle using the vanilla p3d of the mine, make new graphics, place the mine, then when detonating, createMine, attach it to the new mine vehicle and boom. Here is my version of a limpet mine.

PROBLEM:

:confused: I found an incompatibility between SAM handsignals and the underwater diving module that I can't seem to fix. I believe it is because both mods set keystrokes for the player, but I can't figure out what the problem is because SAM handsignals uses different keys. My module uses User Action 19 and 20. I believe SAM handsignals uses 1-9. It's like my files and SAM handsignals files that set and execute keystrokes both cancel each other out. Anyone know a workaround or fix? EDIT: FIXED IT! :)

Edited March 11, 2012 by Feint

[[aps]gnat 28]

You can use the pipebomb simulation with a timer?

[Feint 137]

I'm just not a fan of the problems involved with using the satchels and pipebombs (needing 2 units to detonate). I've got that all figured out and secured, but since I (on a whim) tried the mine, everything is easier and they look more like the real deal limpet mines the SEALs and other combat divers use for blowing up ships. It's easier to just write my own timer script now rather than use the pipebombs.

My main problem was using createMine instead of createVehicle when holding and placing the mine. So I switched commands and now just use createMine for the detonation sequence. Works like a charm. :)

[kremator 1064]

Great news there Feint!

[Feint 137]

Just a quick update. I fixed the problems with SAM handsignals. Common name in a function call was the problem. I've also written out the closed circuit version of the module, which is a huge step forward. I think I've modified everything correctly, now I just need to test a lot. Found a problem with the CRRC not releasing from the deck of the sub. Need to fix that and need to finish improvements and changes to the locking out procedures. AI just can't lock-in to subs. I know the problem, I'm just not sure I can fix it.

Also, don't get your hopes up, but I've been using a small fuel tank as a Dry Deck Shelter on the deck of the Los Angeles class sub that Gnat made. It's non-functional meaning that there's no opening door or anything, but it's a good placeholder. Well, the rust on the outside of the fuel tank was bugging me, so I painted it.

[ei8ght 11]

very impressive work!!!

[nikiforos 450]

Insane stuff :D

[[aps]gnat 28]

Impressive!

...... so what does a normal vessel look like? (might be able to add to Subs)

[nowke 1]

Sounds great !!!!!

:D

:D :D

:D :D :D

:D :D :D :D

[J-Guid 10]

Feint, you have a diver delivery device?!

I have one good model :)

[Feint 137]

Gnat;2118655']Impressive!

...... so what does a normal vessel look like? (might be able to add to Subs)

Here's some good info:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/990100-drydeck.htm

From the outside' date=' it looks like one big tube that's like a garage for the Seal Delivery Vehicle or CRRC. But inside, there are two spheres and that garage. The middle compartment is the one you ascend into from inside the submarine. Then you can move forward into the garage area or rearward into the most forward compartment for compression and decompression. All three are empty of water but can be flooded.

Feint, you have a diver delivery device?!

I have one good model :)

Are you talking about an SDV or some kind of handheld diver propulsion device? I don't really have anything like that. There are some issues with getting boats to go underwater. I've gotten the CRRC underwater, but it's attached to something using attachTo, so I can't drive it anywhere. As soon as I detach it, it shoots up to the surface in less than a 1/4 second. If there's a way to control buoyancy of boats, it would be best to make something neutrally buoyant. The closest I've seen to this is the life raft that deploys when ejecting from the F/A-18 Hornet. That boat almost sinks. I can almost get it to stay underwater, but not quite and not for very long. I also suspect that there are problems with judging position when in the presence of multiple flat surfaces. So if you are attached to an invisible pond and you go over another diver that is also attached to a pond, the diver underneath you will shoot to the surface and be detached from his pond. That's because getPos gets confused by flat surfaces being above each other. It's a known bug with Arma's engine apparently.

I also noticed something interesting the other day. In semi-rough water when the CRRC is just floating, it sometimes almost doesn't float to the surface fast enough and water will aaaaaalllllmost get into the boat. But then I've seen the CRRC moving upward in the water almost like it is setPos-ing at a rate of about once every 0.5 seconds or so. It floats normally then jump jump jump jump jump when it's about to swamp. So I'm guessing that BIS has placed some sort of script into the CRRC (and maybe into all vehicles that are boats) that causes them to setPos upward when close to 0 meters sea level. I'm guessing that's why it's so difficult to get some of the boats to stay underwater (because I'm fighting a script that setPos's them above water at all times). Gnat has a good solution for submarines that seems to work very well. I don't know how it would work in close proximity to another sub or how it would work going inside of a DDS, but those are probably things that could be overcome with scripting the way I'm launching the CRRC.

QUICK UPDATE:

I found and fixed a problem (dumb coding mistake during late nights) where the air wasn't being removed from tanks, but so far everything looks good. You can go to any of the tank recharging stations and change circuits there. So you can switch back and forth between an open circuit SCUBA system or a closed circuit LAR-V system. It's a good idea when starting out to use the Dive Computer to watch your ppO2 (partial pressure of Oxygen) levels when using the Lar-V. When diving down to a mere 6 meters, your ppO2 rises to 1.6 which is very high because you are breathing 100% oxygen. At that depth and at that level of oxygen exposure, your tissue loading of oxygen is very fast and you could be dead within a minute. So it's best to keep an eye on it and ascend to a more shallow depth. I made this mistake when first testing the Lar-V and thought my calculations were all wrong. But I've double, triple and quadruple checked my data and the numbers are all correct and accurate to real world measurements. That means, when using a closed circuit Lar-V system breathing 100% oxygen, and launching the CRRC from the Dry Deck Shelter, you will be hovering around 1.5 to 1.6 partial pressure of oxygen. At 1.5, you are probably OK for a while, but at 1.6, you are in the danger zone. So it's best to dive down, start launching the CRRC, rise up, wait for the CRRC to be ready, dive back down and untether the CRRC from the deck of the sub. Rise up with the CRRC and when it's above the surface, you can rise up too and get into the CRRC and move off to execute the commands of the CNO and the President. When you are returning from your mission to the sub, you can activate a homing beacon which will guide you into the sub. Place the sub under the arrow and it will be attached and retracted automatically. Eject your crew and yourself, dive down, dock the CRRC back into the Dry Deck Shelter and you are good to go. Lock into the sub and move on to your next mission. (I'm still seeing if I can get the AI to lock in and lock out. We'll see.)

[J-Guid 10]

Ok, Feint, i think i know how 'hack' this curve issue :) ;), researching inprogress...

[[aps]gnat 28]

.... wow, think I'm gonna need a Ticket to operate this addon !!

Thanks for the reference.

[lennard 447]

It suprises me you don't have a "BI developer" avatar yet..

Great stuff as always there Feint!

[Feint 137]

I'm going to make a quick video to demo the above. It's a lot to read. :) Thanks all for the nice compliments. Hopefully I can release this soon so you know i'm not all talk.

[J-Guid 10]

Feint PM me please about SDV ;)!

[[aps]gnat 28]

It suprises me you don't have a "BI developer" avatar yet..

LOL .. yeh, we're loosing them like hot-cakes ..... last one I think was Rocket.

[exikutioner 10]

Hopefully I can release this soon so you know i'm not all talk.

The documentation you have done with this addon alone as proved you are not all talk. Keep up the AMAZING work! Looking forward to the release. PM me if you need more beta testers for this mod.

[Feint 137]

Movie is taking me a little longer than I hoped. Need to reshoot the ending. So here are some screenshots I made using Pook's excellent Light Tower addon.

This is nothing I've created. I just took his light tower and attached it to a boat and turned it on. Here's the code you can enter into the init field of the light tower with the boat being named "fishingboat".

this animate ["powergenswitch",1]; this animate ["light",0]; this animate ["powergenswitch_dashlight",0]; null = this execVM "\pook_lighttower\data\scripts\powergen.sqf";this animate ["mast",1]; this animate ["lightpole",1]; this attachTo [fishingboat,[0,-4.5,-4]]; 

The generator sound doesn't turn on for some reason, but everything else works great. This is especially helpful at this spot on Utes because it's in a spot on the map where lightpoints don't work. It seems that if you are far enough from land, a lightpoint has to be REALLY bright for it to show up at all, and when it does, it's way too bright. The good news is, there's a thicker blue contour line around most islands where if you are closer than that spot, the lightpoints will work most of the time, but not always. What does that mean? At this point in the map, the underwater flares don't light up and the headlamps don't light up. So this light tower helps solve that problem in a kind of real world kind of way, I guess.

Played around with adding lights to Nimitz too.

Edited March 19, 2012 by Feint

[J-Guid 10]

good feature! what about shooting in/under water?!

[SigintArmA 10]

Shooting underwater would result in nothing Hehe the bullet would stop within at least one meter I believe. Though xD I'm sure you're joking.

[Feint 137]

As far as I know, there aren't any weapons capable of discharging while underwater. Don't know if that's a game limitation or what. But also, because you are always swimming, there's no way to aim a weapon. That's really the first problem.

EDIT: OK, weapons CAN be fired while underwater, just not in the shallows. I just did a test on a lake (when you try to dive in a take, you setPos instantly down to the floor of the lake and stand up and draw your weapon, so you are no longer performing the swimming animation). I was able to fire off my M9, hit the ground, hit the wall of the dam in Chernarus and I was able to kill my AI teammate who was also walking on the ground of the lake. I didn't try any other weapons.

Seems like the limitation with firing weapons might be the bullet traveling from above to below the surface of the water, but I haven't tested this very much. The bullets in previous testing were able to travel about a meter below the surface before being deflected back up above the surface of the water.

So the only remaining problem is aiming a weapon while swimming. It is possible to switchMove out of the swimming animation to a different animation while swimming, but you aren't able to playMove out of the swimming animation. I tested this a long time ago, and I don't remember exactly, but as soon as the new animation has completed one cycle, you switchMove back to swimming. But I don't remember exactly. I'll do more testing.

UPDATED EDIT: OK, so I was able to use a brute force method for forcing an aiming animation while underwater. I used the prone pistol aiming animation and just repeated the switchMove every 0.02 seconds. Works fine. Except the problem again is that the pistol won't fire when submerged. Also, I can't aim up or down, only side to side. This might be as a result of the forced switchMove's starting animation frame being in a fixed up/down pistol position. Not sure. But I feel a bit closer to solving this problem. I was able to lie down on the surface of the water and fire a pistol. That would be useful while swimming. But I need to be able to aim up and down and it would be better not to brute force an animation. I'm not sure what that would look like on slower machines. It's weird. I was able to aim down the sights of the pistols though. Hmmmmmm. :( HELP!

This is the script I activated with a trigger to aim while in water:

_caller = _this select 1;
underwaterpistol = 1;while {underwaterpistol == 1} do{    player switchMove "AidlPpneMstpSrasWpstDnon01";    sleep 0.02;};

Then to turn it off, I just had another radio trigger which set underwaterpistol = 0 and player switchMove "".

The main problem I'm encountering is that as soon as you switchMove to an animation while in water, you flip back to the default idle swim animation as soon as the animation has completed playing once (when swimming). CONFIRMED

If someone can figure out a way to prevent the swimming animation from starting up again, while in water, or some other similar workaround, go for it. If you can do that, the next obstacle would be to get a weapon that can shoot underwater (rifle or pistol). This part isn't super critical as I think firing a weapon underwater is a bit silly unless it's a bang stick (a stick with a single bullet in it used for getting rid of sharks).

Really, ideally, someone will make a new animation that you can switchTo which only makes use of the arms (like the halt animation) and ignores the legs and rest of the body. I'm not sure how animations work, but this would be my vote. Then, there needs to be a way of getting the player "stuck" in that animation. Then it would just be a simple manner of switchMove "" to get unstuck.

OR

Does someone know the name of the idle aiming animation (while standing) of a pistol or a rifle? And does someone know a way of getting stuck in an animation intentionally?

Here's an idea. I could just avoid the whole issue and create an invisible floor for the player to stand on. Then they would stop swimming and start shooting. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Is there an invisible floor in the Arma2 world? Isn't there an invisible road that helicopter addon makers use for correcting instruments?

Edited March 19, 2012 by Feint

[logandog1240 10]

@[APS]Gnat

Wouldnt you be able to make an sdv by scaling down the delta class and recycling some scripts?

excuse my almost obvious ignorance of the subject. Im sure its much harder than that.