Anyone else is afraid what ArmA III is going to do to the addons scene?

[Innomadic 10]

OFPs 5 years of life was perfect for the engine, shame we couldn't get 5 years out of ArmA II. Oh well.

Perhaps this was due to A2's faggotry regarding bugs and performance issues that they are trying to get it right the first time with A3?

[wolfbite 8]

Yeah it's soooo easy to port old stuff over. That means that all the big Mods which are in development since years are full of lazy bummers. You obviously have no idea what it means to properly port an addon over even from the previous Engine (A1), not to mention OFP content.

Hard to describe, you need to join us to get an idea. :D

Ooops sorry I didnt mean to say its easy... I realise its not easy to port over from the older games. And I totally appreciate the immense amounts of time people put into transfering these across. But It will mean not much has changed in the backround of the game if you know what I mean.. To use an extreme example compare Original red alert to red alert 3... There are still general things that apply to both units but red alert 3 is far more sophisticated....

[wamingo 1]

The development costs of John Romero's Daikatana went from expected 3mil to about $30mil or something similarly stupid, largely because of refitting the game from the quake1 engine to quake2.

That was about a decade ago. And they got paid.

[instagoat 133]

I think there will be new people coming in with Arma 3, but there´ll be not as many people as before in total, and the scene probably won´t last as long for several reasons.

Firstly, increased complexity of developing addons in a time where people have less and less spare time on their hands to fully dedicate to time consuming mod work. Especially when the work is so time consuming and comprehensive that development time for mods isn´t in the range of months or a single year, but multiple years unless a large amount of people get together... and even THEN, mod work is slow. It´s either that, or low quality.

Secondly, the lack of documentation, which has been named as a problem by several members of this community before. I´ve barely scraped the surface, but for example, I couldn´t even figure out how to do reskins from the info that was available on the biki and elsewhere.

Lastly, general short-livedness of games in this day and age. People buy a title, play the campaign, play the missions, and unless they immediately get drawn by the community, ditch the game after a comparatively short time of about two or three months.

People NEED to be aware of the existence of this community, RIGHT AWAY WHEN GETTING THE GAME. This is important, otherwise a lot of people won´t even know that there is more to A3 than just the basic content it´s delivered with, and a fancy, complex and probably again, poorly documented mission editor. We have to rely on third parties, such as Mr. Murrays editing bible, to learn how to use the Editor. This should not be!

To sustain and revive the modding scene once A3 kicks off, modding has to be made easier in general, more easy to get into by means of comprehensive documentation, and quicker by simplifying config work or similar things.

My two cents.

[wolfbite 8]

Yeah I must say the lack of serious documentation or tutorials makes things very hard..... I mean I started trying to make a new addon for ArmAII (AFter dropping Ka-50 I made for OFP) and found I was still being sent to the Colonel Kling learjet tutorial that was never finished.... Still there are so many things that are ridiculously hard to find info about.

E.G making the control panels work, Making landing gear compress on landing etc.... You have to swim through a lot of outdated and stuff that just plain leads onto something else.

But there are always going to be people who will mod this... and there will always be new people to learn.... So I dont think the mod community will. die...

[metalcraze 290]

Perhaps this was due to A2's faggotry regarding bugs and performance issues that they are trying to get it right the first time with A3?

Have you played OFP :j:

Because even on 2011-level PCs it still has heavy FPS drops

[Zipper5 74]

Because even on 2011-level PCs it still has heavy FPS drops

That's because it isn't coded to take advantage of modern hardware architecture.

A better example to use for this would have been the state of OFP at release... Which those who were around at the time, I'd imagine, can testify to perhaps even being worse than Armed Assault's launch state. :o

No matter what state BIS' games are at release, you are guaranteed they will support the game many times longer than your average developer these days.

[mic1402 10]

Myke;1935346']

And please' date=' no arguments like "hey, this is how it worked back in OFP", this isn't OFP anymore.[/quote']

This is the problem i had. i tried modding for arma2/co. but I gave up. there is hardly any information about anything, and it is quite hard to get started.

the best tut's i found where:

1. a 12 year old OFP tut(!)

2. gnats video tuts.

the Biki has basically nothing as it is filled with outdated info.

[4 IN 1 0]

OFP=> A1: the difference between engine version is so big that all things ended up having to comepetely redo

A1=>A2: the difference is still big that most things ended up having major overhaul inorder to work properly

I don't think that things will change much this time around.

[VictorFarbau 0]

Ahhh bad news are always good news aren't they :) Well, have faith brother; if people really want to get some stuff ported it will happen. Plus, a few things also went through the community to be completed in A2.

I for one can very well live with the addons provided by BIS if I had to (except for the sounds, different story :) ). The big fun for me in this game is the addition of tactics, landscape and freedom. Whether some enemy units 800m down the road are in camouflage or desert paint, I don't mind.

I created a huge MP mission in OFP already. But i put all variables (object and city positions, airport locations and runway characteristics) into a separate file. When migrating to A1 and later to A2 (Chernarus) I just changed the file and some addon class names to be spawned. In a matter of 10 min the mission was back up, usually a lot bigger and even better than before. So A3, here I come.

Stay positive, it's a game after all - AND YOU MUST WIN! :D

VictorFarbau

[hmmwv 0]

I´m 3D/2D artist and I´ve been working in the videogame industry for years. Said this, from my point of view, I think Oxygen is one of the most frustrating and unintuitive tools I have ever seen in a while.

If BI don´t release import/export plugins for MAJOR 3D packages (I mean Max, Maya, Modo...) and a proper documentation, the mod scene will grow up even more slowly than in Arma/Arma 2.

[Scubbo 10]

thanks all the mod devs and mission makers out there! you make the bis games worth playing beyond a day :-) !