The trouble with getting people into Arma

[nodunit 397]

Like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3oG5kBs9bY&feature=related

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Yeah, minus all the dangerous shit those two were doing. :p

[HyperU2 11]

Seconded.

I shoot very well on the move irl, probably better than when I'm standing still. Not so in ARMA.

[antoineflemming 14]

Yeah, here's the thing - it already is. They have their own damn studio. :thumbface:

I would be leaning more towards what HyperU2 is suggesting. Animations need to be interruptible.

I would go further - animations where some semblance of weapon accuracy is important need to be very carefully captured. Because the current mocap process captures the movement of the weapon proxy, and your ingame bullets go precisely where the proxy points, every little jitter captured in the mocap animation means your rounds will follow them.

The reason the current walking forward and sidestepping animations frustrate the living crap out of people (myself included) is because you can't hit shit due to the weapon jiggling around. I would suggest BIS needs to capture a combat quickstep for A3 so that CQB becomes a touch easier, and not "whoever isn't moving survives." It should be a glide, with minimal jittering (as usual, depending on fatigue).

I remember hearing somewhere that only SOME of the animations were motioncapped, not all. Animations such as those for running w/o a rifle are clearly NOT motioncapped. The strafing movement with a rifle is also not motion-capped. Maybe the lowerbody animation is, but the upperbody animation isn't. Your arms don't continually from left to right when you're strafing left or right. It's the same sidestepping (strafing) and forward walking problems you've mentioned. This weapon jiggling animation is hand done and added in to emphasize inaccuracy when moving I guess. So I wasn't saying that BIS doesn't do motioncapture. What I was saying was that not ALL of their animations are motioncaptured. Now, if the animations I mentioned ARE motioncaptured,then they need to revamp their mocap system. But don't be so quick to try to rebut my post without reading what I say.

The inability to interrupt animations isn't the only problem with the animation system. It doesn't fix the "clunky" or "jittery" movement that ruins any type of cqb. Motioncapturing every single character animation would contribute greatly to adding cqb gameplay. Not the only solution, as what you stated is perfectly valid and true. But without all motioncaptured movement animations, there wont be effective cqb at all, because hand animated animations will not be smooth and fluid.

Edited November 28, 2011 by antoineflemming

[NoRailgunner 0]

Motioncapture isn't something magic - one would still need to edit, export and config all of the recorded moves/files. There are different ingame characters (male/female, young/old) who also have different animations. Plus one has to make sure that all ingame characters are not making troubles with other or object eg cut through something.

Imho BIS don't have the devs + time (+ money) to capture all movements and make+verify all animations soldiers could possibly do. They have to draw the line and focus on their long list of "must have" stuff & features for A3.

BTT

BIS need to make some more teasers/trailers with ingame footage + show the possibilities of making and enjoying missions. Perhaps BIS should give a hint that A3 campaign/missions can be played using different tactics and procedures? Maybe even point out that the player is the one who makes decisions and face the consequence aswell? Something that is more tempting than shooting through tunnels or countless spawning bots (eg horde mode). :)

[antoineflemming 14]

Motioncapture isn't something magic - one would still need to edit, export and config all of the recorded moves/files. There are different ingame characters (male/female, young/old) who also have different animations. Plus one has to make sure that all ingame characters are not making troubles with other or object eg cut through something.

Imho BIS don't have the devs + time (+ money) to capture all movements and make+verify all animations soldiers could possibly do. They have to draw the line and focus on their long list of "must have" stuff & features for A3.

BTT

BIS need to make some more teasers/trailers with ingame footage + show the possibilities of making and enjoying missions. Perhaps BIS should give a hint that A3 campaign/missions can be played using different tactics and procedures? Maybe even point out that the player is the one who makes decisions and face the consequence aswell? Something that is more tempting than shooting through tunnels or countless spawning bots (eg horde mode). :)

Not trying to argue here, but 1) I never said it was "something magic". 2) If BIS has time to "revamp" their animation system, I'd think they'd have time to capture new animations (like the diving/underwater swimming) and/or recapture existing animations. I just hope that their revamped animation system will include all motion-capture for the basic, necessary movements (run/walk/sprint/turn with AND without weapons in hand). IF they are redoing some animations, I'd prefer if they would redo turning/looking and sprinting with/without weapons in hand (realistically, soldiers wouldn't swing their arms that way when sprinting with a rifle and with gear). As I said, I hope this is what they're doing with the revamped animation system, otherwise what is being revamped? This is probably what they're doing (hopefully). Your suggestion about the trailers, is this to appeal to new ArmA players or the current fanbase? If the first, then that'd be really good. If the latter, then well the latter doesn't need proof that ArmA3 will be a simulator and not a linear on-rails shooter with endless spawning AI. Although I'd like if BIS showed a short story trailer that included most of the things the player would do, as that would also highlight the "decision" aspect you're talking about.

[Cripsis 10]

VBS2 v2.0 announcement should be launched in a few hours from now at I/ITSEC , very interested to see if any new animations are shown.

[PuFu 4600]

I remember hearing somewhere that only SOME of the animations were motioncapped, not all. Animations such as those for running w/o a rifle are clearly NOT motioncapped. The strafing movement with a rifle is also not motion-capped. Maybe the lowerbody animation is, but the upperbody animation isn't. Your arms don't continually from left to right when you're strafing left or right. It's the same sidestepping (strafing) and forward walking problems you've mentioned. This weapon jiggling animation is hand done and added in to emphasize inaccuracy when moving I guess. So I wasn't saying that BIS doesn't do motioncapture. What I was saying was that not ALL of their animations are motioncaptured. Now, if the animations I mentioned ARE motioncaptured,then they need to revamp their mocap system. But don't be so quick to try to rebut my post without reading what I say.

All human animations are motion caped (running without a rifle might be the exeption here, i agree).

The ones that aren't are the animals.

But you obviously have little knowledge about what is the workflow for recording mocap, then cleaning those up and getting them ingame. It is not as simple as you writing those meaningless post on those forums...

@Cripsis: please understand that BIS and BIA are 2 separate companies. If there is something done in VBS, doesn't necessary means will see light in A3...there is a chance but there is no guarantee either way...

[Cripsis 10]

@Cripsis: please understand that BIS and BIA are 2 separate companies. If there is something done in VBS, doesn't necessary means will see light in A3...there is a chance but there is no guarantee either way...

Why are we seeing some of the same ARMA3 presentation footage and screenshots in some recent VBS2 advertisements? It's exactly the same. Are we being misinformed?

[dmarkwick 261]

Why are we seeing some of the same ARMA3 presentation footage and screenshots in some recent VBS2 advertisements? It's exactly the same. Are we being misinformed?

Because VBS is derived from ArmA, everything that ArmA3 will have will eventually make it into VBS, but the reverse is not true.

[Craig_VG 20]

Why are we seeing some of the same ARMA3 presentation footage and screenshots in some recent VBS2 advertisements? It's exactly the same. Are we being misinformed?

What does VBS2 v2.0 provide in terms of graphics?

All VBS2 content has been ported from VBS2 v1.x to VBS2 v2.0, but model fidelity is unchanged. This means that while the models will be rendered with better shading and have nicer shadows, they will look pretty much the same. We are however including a range of ArmA2 content and these are “game†quality models with higher texture resolution and more polygons. We use these “game†quality models in VBS2 v2.0 videos and other marketing material.

-http://armory.bisimulations.com/products/vbs2/overview

[Cripsis 10]

Thanks for clearing that up bobtom. God I hate marketing gimmicks, one thing I cannot stand is dishonesty, shall never purchase another BIS product again.

[ProfTournesol 956]

Thanks for clearing that up bobtom. God I hate marketing gimmicks, one thing I cannot stand is dishonesty, shall never purchase another BIS product again.

:confused:

[maddogx 13]

Thanks for clearing that up bobtom. God I hate marketing gimmicks, one thing I cannot stand is dishonesty, shall never purchase another BIS product again.

You're either joking or extremely confused.

[Maio 293]

You're either joking or extremely confused.

Of course he's joking :bounce3:

[Craig_VG 20]

He better be joking...

[dmarkwick 261]

Surely he means he'll never buy another BIA product again... ;)

[nodunit 397]

I personally enjoy the BIS/BIA dynamic, it means that customers win on both sides. I mean sure we don't get ALL of the fancy stuff that VBS2 offers however we get portions of the plate at the same time, thermal imaging is one of those things and now physX will be another, who knows perhaps in future a 3D editor will be made that will closely resemble the one shown, until then we have RTE.

[Rampastein 10]

Well, while I haven't really posted here on these forums, I've been playing BIS games for almost a decade. And I've also noticed in LAN parties that it's hard to get people into Arma.

Why? We're not a bunch of people playing generic FPS's like CoD and stuff like that. Some time ago we played some OFP in LAN and it was awesome -- pretty much everyone from us 10 participants agreed that it was the best game ever for playing in LAN. Then we moved into Arma 2, and everyone switched to something else within 30 minutes.

Firstly, some people had problems trying to get the game running smoothly (the requirements are way too high -- even with a Radeon HD 4850 (which is only a bit more than half a year older than the game!) and a Phenom II X4 I get about 45 FPS on average on low-to-medium settings). The hardware requirements are simply too high - most people (including me) don't want to buy a new GPU just for ARMA when the current GPU can run everything else on almost maximum graphics without a problem.

After playing a bit, we noticed that, unlike OFP which comes with dozens of multiplayer missions, of which there are multiple Co-op aswell as multiple deathmatch, sector control etc. missions, Arma 2 comes with 5 different missions, only one for each gamemode. Sure, we can edit them with the wizard, but that's not the same thing as including a lot of entirely different missions for all game modes. Also, the wizard is included in OFP aswell, so practically OFP came with many, many times more multiplayer missions than Arma 2.

Just think about it - the OFP campaign had something like 30+ missions, and the Arma 2 has like 10 (which were so massive in their scale that they were mostly just moving around -- if I wanted a driving simulator there's better products for that). Arma 2's amount of multiplayer missions is so little that it feels like I'm buying a game engine, some weapons and models and must make the actual game myself. While we have an excellent mission editor, it is no excuse for not having many multiplayer missions; making missions requires time that I'd rather use for something else, and you don't start making missions during a LAN party. With OFP we could just go ingame and spend hours and hours on all the different missions included with the game.

In addition to that very basic fault of not having anything to actually play (yeah, you might have a LOT of vehicles and stuff but who cares when there's zero missions to use them in?), there are some very annoying, low-quality things in the game. Firstly the lighting. Everything doesn't suddenly turn black in my eyes if I have my head pointing to the sun, nor does everything turn white when I'm looking away from the sun. It's a nice HDR effect, but it's way overdone and often makes aiming impossible unless I mess with the in-game brightness settings (after which the game doesn't look realistic anymore).

Then there's the random crashes and other kinds of bugs in the game. For example, saving/loading in multiplayer is a pain and often crashed half of us. After we finished a round of Seize the Area, two of us crashed and for one guy the game froze on "receicing data" until he ended the process arma2.exe. For other bugs, at one point when I was the squad leader and I died, no one inherited the squad leader status and so we were a group without a leader -> no one could command the AIs on our squad and they didn't follow anyone. After seeing multiple issues like these within an hour of gameplay we really didn't want to continue -- instead we enjoyed the much more stable and finished multiplayer of OFP in the same evening.

With all these issues, I wouldn't be wondering at all why people don't want to play ARMA. I do make some missions with the editor every once in a while, but when we try to play them in MP we find it hard to enjoy even those custom missions because of bugs. And after we've completed those custom-made missions, there's nothing else left to play because there's practically nothing included with the release. If someone doesn't enjoy Arma 2, it doesn't mean that he's an average gamer who only likes bunnyhopping around in CoD. More than often it just means that Arma 2 should be much better than it really is.

Now, maybe some of you will think that why I'm not searching for mods and community-made missions. From my experience the missions made by the community are varying in their quality and finding a surely good mission might sometakes take almost as long as playing it. I found some mod which fixes the ridiculous HDR-sunlight-darkness effect, and have it installed, but even that required a bit of messing around with the Community Base Addons and all that (and more importantly, I feel all the CBA credits included everywhere are just bloating the game).

With ARMA 3 going to the same direction of very high system requirements and promising more features instead of actually finishing the game and releasing it as bugfree, I don't think I'm buying another BIS product for a while unless ARMA 3 happens to get some excellent reviews. Hopefully Arma 2 pays its €50 price tag back in some ~3 years once we have powerful enough hardware to actually run it well (and assuming that there would be more missions to play then).

[antoineflemming 14]

I personally enjoy the BIS/BIA dynamic, it means that customers win on both sides. I mean sure we don't get ALL of the fancy stuff that VBS2 offers however we get portions of the plate at the same time, thermal imaging is one of those things and now physX will be another, who knows perhaps in future a 3D editor will be made that will closely resemble the one shown, until then we have RTE.

?? Uh, 3d editor is confirmed... So there's no perhaps about it. And it will probably resemble the VBS2 one.

[4 IN 1 0]

Surely he means he'll never buy another BIA product again... ;)

Even if he is not joking, honestly, I don't really think people should care.

[nodunit 397]

?? Uh, 3d editor is confirmed... So there's no perhaps about it. And it will probably resemble the VBS2 one.

Call me...cautious, I won't be believing too much of confirmed features until I see em.

[Tonci87 163]

Well Arma 2 has a 3D Editor as well....it doesn´t work like expected, but its a start^^

[CameronMcDonald 146]

Ah, McCBF.

Edited November 30, 2011 by CameronMcDonald

[kuokenken 1]

Well,I think most important of all,when u are recommand the game

Not only need to be fair about whole game,including this game is hardware murderer bla..

and u have to analysis is this person will like to play this type of game

not all FPS player will love this game

just like not all the air combat player will play Falcon and A-10

I think the best way is to type a introduces article

I have type one article and try to be fair,and type out how the whole game is going

including the game playmode,weapon system,maps,image,vehicle,such like that

and comparsion with other game,let them watch playthrough videos

and warm them do not bye until they sure they love this seious game

After I type this article,those who try this game have more than half stay with our team

I wish I could post it,but unfortunatelly,it was type with foreign language

u might already find out my grammer is pretty suck,lol

If u still wanna see it,I could try to explain to u