ARMA series - Great Soldier Sim, not so great Tactical Shooter ?

[vini_lessa 10]

Batto, I actually have Raven Shield, but I don’t like its single-player campaign much. I think it deviated somehow from the planning emphasis of the originals to a more SWAT-like on-the-fly tactical action. Not that it’s a bad thing per se, but in case of R6 Im more a planner then a player, and always loved its “20 min planning, 2 min execution†thing. I even took more time watching the replays than actually “playing†the game, and finished RSpear in commander chair/watch mode in elite level. XD

By the way, I bought both Raven Shield and Ghost Recon through Steam for very cheap. You may want to take look there.

[batto 17]

Not that it’s a bad thing per se, but in case of R6 Im more a planner then a player, and always loved its “20 min planning, 2 min execution†thing. I even took more time watching the replays than actually “playing†the game, and finished RSpear in commander chair/watch mode in elite level. XD

Same here =)

By the way, I bought both Raven Shield and Ghost Recon through Steam for very cheap. You may want to take look there.

Today I sent email to two people in my country offering gold eddition for cca 6-7$. I'm serious with Ubisoft boycott :nono:

[metalcraze 290]

Nice try, but if you do actually want a video that refutes your statement that "Enemies that are placed in their respective rooms will never go anywhere in SWAT4." and I'll happily to provide one.

I'm waiting.

Like it would be great to see them reacting when you kill their bros a room away. Not them just running away from/into your bullets when you enter their room.

[MrBump 10]

I'm waiting.

Like it would be great to see them reacting when you kill their bros a room away. Not them just running away from/into your bullets when you enter their room.

Wouldn't want to keep you waiting now would we, 7 and a half minute mark, the player uses that fact that they move from room to room to draw them out and take them down, "static turrets standing in one place all the time" and "enemies that are placed in their respective rooms will never go anywhere" my bum, oh and see the use of quotation marks, that's because I'm quoting you metal "properly played" craze.

LOHcxtLWMLg

[froggyluv 2130]

Not sure how anyone's whos played Swat4 could call the AI "static". No they are not as smart as humans nor always using tactical thinking but one thing they are not is stationary because that for me is a game-breaker and I wouldn't have played for more then 5 minutes *Cough* GRAW *Cough*. For a game as old as SWAT4, the cqb AI still holds it own.

Edited May 26, 2012 by froggyluv

[vini_lessa 10]

Great video, Mr Bump. In that case, not only the AI moved between rooms, but moved in group. Cool.

Another thing I like about SWAT3/4 AI is that it seems to have hidden morale and agressiveness atributes, giving it a very life-like unpredictness. Some enemies will give up on the first shout, some wont give up untill shot and shocked, and some will give up at first but then rise again and shoot you or then taking their weapon and running screaming, all the while speaking different and very appropriated expressions (like the one from the video "fuck, I wont die for this!").

By the way, on this hidden atributes thing - wouldnt it be interesting if ARMA had it too ? To be frank I never noticed this in the game myself (eg: it wasnt apparent if Razor team - Coops, Scarlet, Sykes and Robo - was really differentiated abilities-wise). Anyway, I think something like this would be interesting:

Or maybe making these atributes hidden, and just describing/suggesting the abilites in each soldier profile. This way would be more realistic and in line with ARMA premisse, I think.

Edited May 26, 2012 by vini_lessa

[NacroxNicke 11]

I found that those attributes are just useless CPU demanding stuff that can be easily simulated by a good AI squad scripting or a good mission design

Because if you for example do an atributte called "Disciplined" and you have two npcs, one that has a lot of discipline and another that doesn't has any of discipline, one will keep formation and fight until death, and the player will see it as a "suicide attitude", and the other one will break and rout or surrender, and the player will see it as a nice touch, or a bug (when the units rout), but he will never think of the "discipline" of that unit, instead he will look at it as a nice feature of the mission or the scripting.

So you instead of assigning a valor of Discipline to every unit (a very CPU demanding stuff, as the game will have that stats into the memory all the mission, and will check it in every scripted action that the AI will do), you can just do a checking when the situation happens to a squad and do random actions for every unit (and that should be mission designing job, I will explain why), instead of checking individually what is the discipline of the units according to their situtation

Also, you need to do a very basic AI that can take cover and stuff like that, because if you script too much the AI by engine, you won't be capable of doing certain situations with them, because if you script that with all discipline units won't rout, then if you want to make them rout in a certain point, and the engine by start assign randomnly a lot of discipline, you won't be capable of doing that and it will get bugged (a problem where all missions makers can go into since everytime that one is designing a mission there is a point where the engine AI does what they want instead of doing what do you want, but some commands like DisableAI can help into this)

Also I wouldn't compare SWAT 4 AI with what a tactical game AI should have, as SWAT 4 AI is more based on the individual thing, as the terrorists plays a individual role or they don't have such teamwork that a squad, platoon or company will have in a battle. Moreover, if you developed such thing, then the player would be insignificant in the battle as the squad leader of 8 men, as the conventional battles are decided by big groups of soldiers, ranging from a Company to a Batallion instead of a Squad going rambo into enemy lines killing tanks or the such, because the player would follow chain of command orders from their platoon and that would take some of the funnyness of some missions, unless you are a grunt, but in that case tactical AI can be faked by the mission design.

I think that there should be an advanced AI pre-mission scripted for very basic skirmishing/battle missions, but the scripting pseudolanguage should have some commands to disable certain (not all by just having one command at all) attributes to have still some free will on what to design

Well I think that this will be inserted in ARMA 3 or maybe some closer expansion (It may be present in ARMA 2 at the moment but not in a totally friendly way

[rye1 21]

Hey if you guys are ever up for SWAT 4 (SSF mod, TSS) or RVS, PM me!