Will we ever have a real "city" in the ArmA Series?

[Cripsis 10]

every house should be enterable.

I completely agree with you. I hate the idea of BF3 style buildings that are made simply for "decoration" purposes.

[rye1 21]

Enter ALL the things.

Doors need to be fixed then... ever had AI walk straight through them? :mad:

[PuFu 4591]

I disagree, every house should be enterable.

You do realize that an enter-able building is 3 times (at least) the amount of polies and sections than a normal ones...

Making a high rise city center is posible, especially if you don't really care a lot about AI...

[pvt_ryan 10]

Not every single house needs to be enterable... I never have a feeling that I lack enterable houses in BF3, yet most of them are not enterable...

I could not disagree more. In my experience BF3's immersion factor is very much damaged by many of its maps pseudo-urban setting, in which buildings (that the player may neither enter or destroy) only serve as borders for out of bounds areas and as devices to funnel players into chokepoints. One could argue that it's virtually the same cagey map philosophy that CoD is based around. But that is neither here nor there; clearly ArmA will be going for a more authentic feel, and I don't mind it at all if that means that they stick to cities of a more manageable size.

I think that a game like ArmA would be fine if around 80% of the buildings were enterable, but that's no reason to not aim for any better!

[Cripsis 10]

I think that a game like ArmA would be fine if around 80% of the buildings were enterable, but that's no reason to not aim for any better!

All the buildings in OA are enterable and furnished and the game runs silky smooth even during hectic firefights so I don't see any reason for including any buildings that are un-enterable.

[katipo66 94]

All the buildings in OA are enterable and furnished and the game runs silky smooth even during hectic firefights so I don't see any reason for including any buildings that are un-enterable.

The thing is the OP is talking skyscraper/high rise type buildings and the type of cities that have these, so to start... do you make only some skyscrapers/high rise enter-able, also the level of detail for furnishing in a believable Arma way would be quite a lot more involved than a Persian rug and some pillows on the floor, there would be at the minimum couches, tables and chairs.. so then considering there are multiple floors and western type furnishing how do the AI behave in this environment?

Not trying to be negative, personally i would actually love to play a Splinter Cell type character in an Arma world based on a GTA world but dont see it happening anytime soon.

[Cripsis 10]

Obviously a city full of enterable skyscrapers is out of the question, but a few highrise buildings would be practicable.

[Brutus404 10]

*Half a century from now*

Me: "Hey grandson, how's your game going?"

Grandson: "Good, we just cleared this skyscraper all the way up and are now waiting to be picked up, because the previous chopper slammed into that building you see there."

<points at skyscraper with a hole in it with smoke coming out>

Me: "Is that scripted?"

Grandson: "Scripted? Whats that?"

Although I very much like the idea of urban warfare on such a scale, I'm afraid that with current technology it will turn into another Fallujah like in Arma 2. Fallujah surely had its moments, but it was too generic to get fully immersed for me.

[Cripsis 10]

I love setting up sniper scenarios against a number of enemy AI whose waypoints cycle through multiple buildings, this way I never know which building or floor they will fire from. I'd love to set up sniper missions in highrise buildings similar to this -

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[Tonci87 163]

You do realize that an enter-able building is 3 times (at least) the amount of polies and sections than a normal ones...

Making a high rise city center is posible, especially if you don't really care a lot about AI...

Yes I know.

Zargabad already has a nice urban feeling to it, the only problem is that there is no house higher than one story.

If we had a Map like Zargabad with a few 4 or 5 story buildings in the town center it would already be enough...

[NoRailgunner 0]

Zargabad and similar/smaller maps are just good for infantry/urban combat. No much need there for combined operations with armored vehicles and aircrafts. Kinda nice for quick fun battles/skirmish but it will get boring after a short certain time.

[wipman 1]

Hi, realistic dense urban areas like in the GTA IV are not possible on the ArmA2 and sure that neither on the ArmA3, the ArmA series are made more for the open spaces than for urban enviroments; with or without alot enterable buildings, booth for performance and also because the AI behaviour... it's not possible on the current and previous ArmA/OFP games and i don't see any change on the ArmA3 engine core that make me think that a realistic medium size city be possible in therms of gameplay & performance. Let's C ya

[Pummel 10]

I don't think this is going to happen in Arma3. Having living breathing towns takes so much effort. Arma4 though, maybe. If this series goes on long enough, then you can expect a game beyond your wildest dreams. Imagine a 1000km country with multiple bustling cities with traffic driving around and people going through 24 hour routines, getting up in the morning, cleaning their teeth, hailing a cab and going to work and then coming home. And then when the enemy force attacks the town, all hell breaks loose and people run around screaming and looking for shelter, breaking shop windows and hiding inside until the tanks pass. Then everything goes quiet as everyone hides indoors, and the war begins, with entire squadrons of players in fighter planes, escorting entire squadrons of players in bombers, dropping bombs on key targets and allowing the ground forces to progress. Perhaps even multiple teams and multiple splinter factions, all fighting over the same town our country and you can bribe warlords, ally with another human team to take on the third team, and them perhaps betray them later on, etc..etc.. Oh, and all this is played through a virtual reality headset with Super Ultra HD and 3d vision and perhaps even a UI which is controlled by your thoughts.

In other words, the sky is the limit when it comes to gaming. Just needs time :)

[rainbird 1]

pimmel: i don' like the part where we use pervasive input devices which "read our mind". but the rest sounds cool. :)

[Baraka 10]

Pummel:

lalala

-----------------------------------------------------

rainbird:

pimmel: i don' like the lalalala

[Pummel 10]

pimmel: i don' like the part where we use pervasive input devices which "read our mind". but the rest sounds cool. :)

It won't learn your secrets and tell people, I swear :P (unless it's made by google)

[pathetic_berserker 4]

good grief....:

....

3. All what you are saying can be achieved (i am not talking about the resulted FPS) in A2, right NOW. Want it badly then read p.B and get working. I would be willing to give you all the reference you need since (as an architect), i have a lot of designs of my own and others that i could send you as reference to start such a project.

......

B. If you are so willing to put together such a blueprint for modders, i guess you have some free time on your hands. In that case, you might use that time better and actually get involved in such a project YOURSELF. If you start modelling those scyscrapers now, you might actually have something to put together on an island by the time A3 hits the shelves. BLENDER and GIMP are FREE to use for any sort of project, might wanna consider learning them

Ignoring the flaws in the OP's initial post , I think this is exactly what it comes down to. It's a bit of shame there are not more people making buldings but at the same time I do understand why (and this applies to BIS as well) they are an incredible amount of work. Sure they can often be reduced to relatively primative shapes, but if you want to realy make it look good, be enterable, make it AI freindly, and have reasonable levels of destruction without overly killing FPS, there has to be a huge investment of time and creativity.

But it can still be worth the effort, and I'm sure that some could make a better looking project than my attemp of a large scale urban construction

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?87769-Stadium-Beta

[rye1 21]

Isn't there a stadium somewhere in A3? You can see it on one of the HALO shots and on the real island of Lemnos... made that will be enterable? Nice find.

[almanzo 144]

So far, no one has even mentioned one very important thing that needs to be considered when talking about big cities. How stupid would a metropolian area feel, without a decent amount of AI civillians, vehicles and so forth?

For mission makers who have used the civillian module and the civillian vehicle module, you know how much this lags the game. Imagine the amount of civillians needed for a whole city.

I don't see how this is relevant for ARMA. ARMA is a battlefield simulator, depicting grand scale warfare. It would of course be cool to have cities, but there is more than enough of other stuff to fix, before even thinking about doing something about urban warfare.

[antoineflemming 14]

So far, no one has even mentioned one very important thing that needs to be considered when talking about big cities. How stupid would a metropolian area feel, without a decent amount of AI civillians, vehicles and so forth?

For mission makers who have used the civillian module and the civillian vehicle module, you know how much this lags the game. Imagine the amount of civillians needed for a whole city.

I don't see how this is relevant for ARMA. ARMA is a battlefield simulator, depicting grand scale warfare. It would of course be cool to have cities, but there is more than enough of other stuff to fix, before even thinking about doing something about urban warfare.

Doesn't matter, Limnos neither has big cities nor a large population of civilians. This discussion is a moot point.

[almanzo 144]

Doesn't matter, Limnos neither has big cities nor a large population of civilians. This discussion is a moot point.

What I was trying to express was exactly that. Cities and big towns are not the direction ARMA should be taking.

[Bangomango 10]

BIS could make a port of Take on Helicopter's Seattle with the limited building enterability you've been mentioning. However, BIS would need to improve pathfinding to make an urban conflict possible.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

Doesn't matter, Limnos neither has big cities nor a large population of civilians. This discussion is a moot point.

Well, not exactly, the discussion doesn't exclude community made content, or the possibility of BIS creating additional islands.

Personaly I think BIS would probably be doing themselves a favour if they made a single small dense urban map with some larger scale buildings on it. Even if it meant doing BF3 style boundaries with blocked alleys and unenterable buildings. Sure it may not be perfect, but neither is it right that everyone pushes for only open widerness with the occasional postcode. At the end of the day it would be one extra island that would (in my opinion) effectively double the interest in the game and assist in creating more varied mission styles and go some way to sustaining better PVP. And before anyone pipes up and says "b.b.b..but ArmA isn't about that", I reckon about 50% of my time playing across the whole series has been PVP, in my eyes ArmA is about everything, and this is just an area that could do with more support.

[NKato 0]

One quick mission scenario for such a city map would be to be a ground soldier leading a squad, fighting against 12 enemy helicopters patrolling the city. This is reminiscent of the finale of the GITS: SAC finale for the second season.

That said, I think the vehicular AI will need to be tweaked a bit for urban combat. Indiscriminately shelling a building to try to kill the people inside it would be out of the question. It would need to be done in a manner as such that the AI will only open fire when it has a confirmed line of sight on the target. This way, collateral damage is kept to a minimum. Of course, it would be a good idea to have three different AI configurations for urban warfare: "Indiscriminate" where the Ai will just blow up anything to get at the enemy, "Discretionary" where the AI will sometimes blow up buildings, and fire directly on a position even though it has no visual contact, and "Cautionary" where the AI will avoid shooting unless it has a confirmed line of sight.

[Cripsis 10]

Personaly I think BIS would probably be doing themselves a favour if they made a single small dense urban map with some larger scale buildings on it

I really like your idea, except I'd prefer all of the buildings to be enterable and the map boundaries to be either ocean or open desert.