How to improve the Close Quarter Combat experience in Arma 3?

[maddogx 13]

There can and should of course be feedback. A few pages back, one_man_clan proposed an auto-lowering/raising feature that would not work while in iron-sight mode, after which I suggested that there should be audio/visual feedback when your rifle strikes the wall - as would be realistic for a piece of metal striking rock. :)

I still think that is the best proposal: have auto-lowering only work when not in sighted mode, otherwise leave in the collisions but let the player know what's happening.

[Whirly 1]

Imo if BIS going to automate lower/raise weapons they should also consider to include at least one or two auto-steps/animations to avoid clipping weapons/barrels or silly (unrealistic) positions.

That's how it works in SWAT 4, if you attempt to move into a position where your weapon would hit the wall the game automatically 'pushes' you away from the wall. I hope that makes sense.

I'm tired of this happening -

SLDntN2t-aQ&context=C4c9a210ADvjVQa1PpcFODIfYh5xtQeNWMxX7Jna6wRmFovYP-R3g=

I would have dropped that sucker in the real world! lol

[CameronMcDonald 146]

What exactly is the point of your vid there? Did you get "pushed" into the hallway? It kind of just looks like you stepped out, revealed yourself, then stepped back in and out again and died when the AI shot you.

EDIT - Or was the first sidestep out too imprecise and expose more of yourself than you intended?

[Whirly 1]

What exactly is the point of your vid there? Did you get "pushed" into the hallway? It kind of just looks like you stepped out, revealed yourself, then stepped back in and out again and died when the AI shot you.

EDIT - Or was the first sidestep out too imprecise and expose more of yourself than you intended?

I wanted to gently lean out the doorway, but kept getting 'stuck', so I stepped out. The problem is the movements are too clunky and too slow, far too slow.

[metalcraze 290]

Auto-lowering/raising should work when in "ironsight mode"/aiming too. The only difference is that the weapon should get back to aiming position.

Otherwise why implement this feature at all when everyone will just waltz through narrow corridors and doors strafing with a weapon always aimed.

[Whirly 1]

In Arma when I'm standing close to a wall in a unconfined area I can step out from behind cover and raise my rifle all in one fluid motion. In my opinion it feels very realistic, actually I think it feels perfect -

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If we could just replicate this same fluid motion (consistantly) when firing around doorways without getting stuck I think it would really make a big difference to Arma's gameplay.

[Smurf 12]

This is my opinion on the raise\lower subject:

[-Coulum- 35]

What exactly is the point of your vid there? Did you get "pushed" into the hallway? It kind of just looks like you stepped out, revealed yourself, then stepped back in and out again and

died when the AI shot you.

Yeah as you edit says It shows how movement is not precise. Even when walking you can’t move

just a tad, you always have to move in big leaps and bounds and in CQB

the smallest overstep can be fatal.

When running I don’t mind the clunkiness because its not easy to run

with tons of gear and whatnot. But when it comes to walking I think

movement needs to be a lot smoother and precise.

Auto-lowering/raising should work when in "ironsight

mode"/aiming too. The only difference is that the weapon should get

back to aiming position.

Otherwise why implement this feature at all when everyone will just

waltz through narrow corridors and doors strafing with a weapon always

aimed.[/Quote]

If you use ironsights you would simple get “stuckâ€. Collision would not be magically turned off while using the ironsights. Or at least that’s how I understood it. But I like your idea to as it will lead to less people getting stuck while in ironsights mode.

This is my opinion on the raise\lower subject:

Infiltration mod (Unreal Tournament 1999) features

Meh. I would prefer lowering and raising weapon to this. I have never

seen this kind of thing done by real soldiers and with large weapons

like the m107 it still wouldn’t prevent collission. If this were to be applied, you shouldn’t be able to bring up the sights while retracting your weapon.

I like the auto raise lowering method better as well because it will give smaller weapons an advantage – they will not be lowered as often and hopefully since they weigh less would be quicker to raise.

[Smurf 12]

Meh. I would prefer lowering and raising weapon to this. I have never

seen this kind of thing done by real soldiers and with large weapons

like the m107 it still wouldn’t prevent collission. If this were to be applied, you shouldn’t be able to bring up the sights while retracting your weapon.

I like the auto raise lowering method better as well because it will give smaller weapons an advantage – they will not be lowered as often and hopefully since they weigh less would be quicker to raise.

That is for when you are close, not "into" the wall. Get closer to the wall and the weapon will be lowered.

In RO2 happens the same thing, the weapon get pushed back while the soldier can hold it somehow (he is reloading, in normal circunstances he lower the weapon to do so) and when there is no room, he lower it or hold it across the screen (depending on the previous stance\weapon position).

EDIT: Sometimes it look weird but it works, you can get where you want when you want, your avatar just adapt to the surroudings.

Edited April 11, 2012 by Smurf

[-Coulum- 35]

So the weapon would be pushed back until you get too close and then it would be lowered? I guess that would be better but still, how do you push a weapon back like that in reality? You definitely wouldn't be able to use the scope and it would be fairly uncomfortable to shoot. It would help with maneuvring in closed spaces but what are the advantages over a auto lower/raise system alone?

[rye1 21]

Nice video, Rye.

Also shows how CQB really is, not hollywoodish hopping/blindfiring. Perhaps that grenade throwing can be achieved by aiming with a deadzone like it's with weapons now (if you turn it on of course)? Except use that deadzone as a throwing angle.

Thanks but your reply I can't agree with this part... :(

"How CQB really is"

It's training. And bad tactical-level decision making through-out.

It's bad training, creating training scars. I don't like this team.

It's far from the realities of warzone Close Quarters.

Unfortunately it's only one example I can find of a 10-bang.

A counter-terrorism DLC would give me a hard-on.

Plus it's from one perspective: BLUFOR.

You ever seen OPFOR training videos? :D

Afghanistan and Pakistan training camp videos?

Some are beyond laughter. I cried at some of the Close Quarter training. So funny... :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-3bsv2Rmpo

I love his spins. Pretty sure he watched Billy Elliott before conducting these drills.

P.S. we need to add his 'girl throw' animation for sure!

Great idea though about grenade throwing.

There's thousands of videos out there....

Many of grenades being thrown, especially in first rooms or out-houses.

Most of these are conducted blind, you don't need to see the enemy to throw a grenade - that's the whole point of a grenade.

Live-saver, risk-mitigater.

Will reply to more later... when I fix my display driver. O_O

---------- Post added at 03:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:03 PM ----------

This is my opinion on the raise\lower subject:

If you're weapons too large to pull back then agreed but if it is then that means your characters either under a lot of stress and forgets or a semi-retard lol. Leads to a noise compromise for those who aren't operating for Close Quarters, i.e. those fools with M107's in a corridor, spinning them around and shooting! This differentiates Maturins posts about sub-machineguns vs others.

Edited April 13, 2012 by Rye

[metalcraze 290]

My point was real life CQB was nothing like what some people think (it's a simulation? so why can't I hop back and forth? Or slide from a wall to a wall)

Of course those guys were too slow.

Is that video for real? Haha

[rye1 21]

Ah I get you now.

Yes it is... haha! It's TB Rambo himself.

[DeclaredEvol 10]

INF Mod was right on the money, and I think it had the best environments for warfare... however, the missions were all spec op based. So that separated its realism...

[SexParty 1]

Thanks but your reply I can't agree with this part... :(

"How CQB really is"

It's training. And bad tactical-level decision making through-out.

It's bad training, creating training scars. I don't like this team.

It's far from the realities of warzone Close Quarters.

Unfortunately it's only one example I can find of a 10-bang.

A counter-terrorism DLC would give me a hard-on.

Plus it's from one perspective: BLUFOR.

You ever seen OPFOR training videos? :D

Afghanistan and Pakistan training camp videos?

Some are beyond laughter. I cried at some of the Close Quarter training. So funny... :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-3bsv2Rmpo

I love his spins. Pretty sure he watched Billy Elliott before conducting these drills.

P.S. we need to add his 'girl throw' animation for sure!

Great idea though about grenade throwing.

There's thousands of videos out there....

Many of grenades being thrown, especially in first rooms or out-houses.

Most of these are conducted blind, you don't need to see the enemy to throw a grenade - that's the whole point of a grenade.

Live-saver, risk-mitigater.

Will reply to more later... when I fix my display driver. O_O

---------- Post added at 03:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:03 PM ----------

If you're weapons too large to pull back then agreed but if it is then that means your characters either under a lot of stress and forgets or a semi-retard lol. Leads to a noise compromise for those who aren't operating for Close Quarters, i.e. those fools with M107's in a corridor, spinning them around and shooting! This differentiates Maturins posts about sub-machineguns vs others.

Ohhhhh thats too good. Lol.

[metalcraze 290]

Also BIS needs to add an animation of soldier holding a grenade when you switch to it.

It's seriously annoying when in the middle of a tight combat you want to fire with your weapon but throw a grenade instead because you forgot to switch from it / didn't press F the right amount of times.

When you switch to a grenade the soldier should lower his weapon and take out a grenade. Simple and fast. Will also allow for that throwing angle aiming.

[rye1 21]

100%. That would be great.

If you can swap primary weapons maybe you could swap grenade hands too. :)

[Tonci87 163]

Also BIS needs to add an animation of soldier holding a grenade when you switch to it.

It's seriously annoying when in the middle of a tight combat you want to fire with your weapon but throw a grenade instead because you forgot to switch from it / didn't press F the right amount of times.

When you switch to a grenade the soldier should lower his weapon and take out a grenade. Simple and fast. Will also allow for that throwing angle aiming.

+1 How many unfortunate "incidents" could have been prevented that way?

[fabrizio_t 58]

How to improve the Close Quarter Combat experience in Arma 3?

My 2 cents:

• AI-wise: sorry, but i think AI "detection" routines have to be entirely re-written. The way AI handles (emulates) line-of-sight in ArmA2 is quite inefficient to me. That's more evident in CQB, or in object clustered spaces.
  Another crucial problem is that part of detection mechanics is still applied on a per-group basis, instead of per-unit basis: no surprise CQB is broken.
  Also "fire & movement" logics should be reworked. For instance, within ArmA2, units threatened by a close target often prefer running around instead of stepping in cover or opening fire.
  Finally AI leaders move around blindly and carelessly, they still lack situational awareness.
  
• Player-wise: we obviously deserve (finally) some fluid animations making player feel he's moving around as a man and not as a gigantic robot.
  

Edited April 17, 2012 by fabrizioT

[-Coulum- 35]

AI-wise: sorry, but i think AI "detection" routines have to be entirely re-written. The way AI handles (emulates) line-of-sight in ArmA2 is quite inefficient to me. That's more evident in CQB, or in object clustered spaces.

Another crucial problem is that part of detection mechanics is still applied on a per-group basis, instead of per-unit basis: no surprise CQB is broken.

Could you explain how these thing currently work and effect the ai. I'm interested in understanding how they function. I agree with all your points but how exactly would these ai problems be fixed?

Edited April 17, 2012 by -Coulum-

[fabrizio_t 58]

Could you explain how these thing currently work and effect the ai. I'm interested in understanding how they function. I agree with all your points but how exactly would these ai problems be fixed?

Most of the AI mechanics are hardcoded or buried into native .fsm files over which we have almost no control nor documentation, but some outcome of some internal mechanics can be observed.

I've no in-depth knowledge on how AI internally works, but having observed its "outcome" for about an year now, there's something i've found.

Let's start looking into danger.fsm, which is basically a "scripted" .fsm file run on a per-unit basis, into which some internal key AI "events" are piped.

It works as a loop and it holds a queue of AI events.

There you can get (almost) real time info on the unit having discovered some enemy, being near to it, having a clear line-of-sight on it, etc.

Each single event "type" as own a priority and only topmost priority event is processed as a state within the .fsm file.

I won't go into detail, but first (minor) problem is that doing so some potentially precious information is discarded whenever more that 1 events are present in the queue ...

However, one of the important events "piped" into danger.fsm is the CAN FIRE (on certain enemy unit) event.

When it's current "top priority", this event triggers a fsm state that does some interesting stuff: it just forces the AI unit to stop there and wait for some seconds, or to wait for the enemy to be dead.

Why? To me it's a "cheap" workaround to make the unit to open fire on a enemy in line-of-sight; it denotes an attempt to "externally" overcome a problem into "core" AI handling.

It's a weak solution and on a side note it may be accidentally overridden by scripting (unit forcespeed -1): that's clearly undesired.

To further depict the scenario of CAN FIRE event: let's imagine our AI unit has this event registered and its state triggered: it means that a enemy is in clear line of sight, it's a threat and should be taken out.

Let's suppose our unit has properly designated enemy as its target (as long as target prioritization does not fail, but this is another matter).

The problem ? Our AI unit won't eventually open fire as long as it's moving. We need to explicitly stop it (unit forcespeed 0) to allow it to shoot.

So here is the issue: moving units in ArmA 2 under (not rare) circumstances don't fire on an enemy (even when commanded to: e.g. through "dofire", editing-wise) even if they have a clear target and/or are directly threated.

AI units do need to be "manually" stopped, to consistently open fire, the same way it's done within danger.fsm.

Having a solid enemy detection routine that would not be a critical problem: the rather ugly code into CAN FIRE state would basically do its job, making the unit stop, allowing it to kill to enemy and go on ...

but that's not the case. Fact is enemy detection (at least into danger.fsm) is quite unreliable: the CAN FIRE event does quite a decent job in registering clear line of sight on newly detected enemies, but it severely fails in registering previously detected units coming again into line of sight. Sometimes they're simply ignored.

Hence AI units keep moving around even if well known threats are visible and close: behaviour pretty easily observable in CQB, because threats are often being detected during approach.

These 2 problems combined are enough to completely break CQB, but there's more.

I'm not positive that in ArmA 2 enemy detection is handled mainly on a per-unit basis, as expected.

We do have scripting commands (e.g. nearTargets) thats allow you to get the approximate enemy position for a single unit.

If you fiddle a bit, you'll discover that an enemy perceived position for a unit is not necessarily what you would expect: usually it tends being the most accurate enemy perceived position of the "most informed" unit in the whole group.

As long as enemy position info (as well as other data) is instantly shared through a group, we will register problems and distortion of AI behaviour, most notably in CQB.

There are other interesting issues, but i've already stealed enough space to this topic.

These were my 2 cents, people more informed than me may add to the matter.

Obviously i stand corrected.

Sorry for my poor english.

Edited April 18, 2012 by fabrizio_T

[-Coulum- 35]

Hmm. interesting. Thanks Fabrizio, I appreciate your description. Unfortunately it kinda seems CQB ai can't truely be fixed without rebuilding a good chunk of whats already been written...

[DeclaredEvol 10]

To be honost, limping after being shot in the chest with body armor or legs.

[giorgygr 61]

@ fabrizio_T:

Awesome description mate

[fabrizio_t 58]

I think another good addition to (outdoor) CQB is some better routine for AI grenade handling.

In ArmA2 looks like AI units use grenades only when enemy is almost in clear line of sight and at some preset distance.

On the contrary we need AI to be able to lob grenades over obstacles, with enemy detected and not in sight (e.g. over walls) and at more variable distances.

Finally, crouched / prone units in ArmA2 use grenades a lot less than standing units and that's a problem.