ARMA 2: OA beta build 93296 (1.60 MP compatible build, post 1.60 release)

[maruk 80]

Our apologies for adding the new "useless scripting commands" that seems to bother so many users in this topic. I will make sure this is never going to happen again and please understand that it was not our intention to make you any troubles by including these commands (note that it is generally quite easy and in development time absolutely insignificant, these were already present in TKOH anyway so really no big deal porting it to OA code branch).

Main reason for this beta are not these command but significant fixes in MP (esp. of some issues newly created by the previous beta) which may not be too clear from the change log as we do not include there fixes of issues introduced by betas.

[Undeceived 392]

Great to have new commands !

But i am not sure that it's really what people need for now !

You never know what others think. :)

Our apologies for adding the new "useless scripting commands" that seems to bother so many users in this topic. I will make sure this is never going to happen again and please understand that it was not our intention to make you any troubles by including these commands (note that it is generally quite easy and in development time absolutely insignificant, these were already present in TKOH anyway so really no big deal porting it to OA code branch).

Main reason for this beta are not these command but significant fixes in MP (esp. of some issues newly created by the previous beta) which may not be too clear from the change log as we do not include there fixes of issues introduced by betas.

I think that the majority of the posters welcome these commands, Maruk. And them being developed without loss of time or effort is still better - I don't see any problem there!

The community really can't complain about BI's general update policy, IMO.

[Lou Montana 101]

Our apologies for adding the new "useless scripting commands" that seems to bother so many users in this topic. I will make sure this is never going to happen again and please understand that it was not our intention to make you any troubles by including these commands (note that it is generally quite easy and in development time absolutely insignificant, these were already present in TKOH anyway so really no big deal porting it to OA code branch).

Main reason for this beta are not these command but significant fixes in MP (esp. of some issues newly created by the previous beta) which may not be too clear from the change log as we do not include there fixes of issues introduced by betas.

Love, love, LOVE to you and your team, gentlemen , "useless scripting commands" always find a use as some people won't find it any use either ; keep the game growing and don't forget your love-share from your love-community of love. (enough love or should I add moar ?)

would it be possible to have another format for the beta log, like TOH with beta # to seperate properly ? and to shut some mouths, an advanced version with all the tiny fixes (if you log them somewhere of course)

Btw please, lock this topic with all the never-satisfied guys inside ;)

[fabrizio_t 58]

These commands may not be optimal, but they're far from being useless.

So thanks for a welcome addition and give us more "useless" stuff like this.

[Dwarden 1124]

There is a very nice addition of those useless functions but after several new beta patches the issue reported here is still present.

That flickering is more visible when you play with high textures and settings and low object details. Its one of the main reason the game still doesnt look like running smooth for me. Every time you look around or zoom there is this barely perceptible flickering making the game looking unfinished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=YuBtYM35e2w&vq=hd720

i was told that what You see there is actually not lod / mipap bug but engines behaviour which adjusts lods based on scene complexity ...

as you move the view the scene complexity is changing and engine lowers/increase the lod

but i do agree it's not optimal and hope it can be tweaked

[dimitri_harkov 10]

Thanks for these new commands and the continued support, BIS!

As for bugs still waiting to be squashed -> Vote on THIS one :)

Cheers,

D.

[gonk 0]

Our apologies for adding the new "useless scripting commands" that seems to bother so many users in this topic. I will make sure this is never going to happen again and please understand that it was not our intention to make you any troubles by including these commands .

Apology accepted...oh wait is that sarcasm?... tic btw shouldn't you be on a plane ?

[SaOk 112]

I dont care some small the blinking, the game is much more important. These Line of Sight commands offer much for new custom AI functions. You can have now especially custom close range AI e.g. for sneaking missions (have anyone played thief-gameserie?). Make the guards to see things like bodies, suspisious changes in their enviroment. Before there was no good way to check if a civilian saw you or not, also for enemies the knowsabout command was quite limited. For us mission creators new commands like these are gifts from heaven (even I am not religious), keeping us even more interested of the game.

[noubernou 77]

The concept of the commands aren't useless, they are just implemented in a way that makes them useless for anything beyond checking things in your immediate (sub 250m) surroundings. Checking for LOS across a distance of many kilometers causes the entire game to lock up for many seconds because you have to get EVERY object in a diameter the length of the check! 99% of the objects passed to the function are going to not even be close to the LOS beam, but there is no good way to get just those objects. I assume the function is also doing some sort of check against these unneeded objects as well.

The commands just seem very, very inefficient.

[Undeceived 392]

I dont care some small the blinking, the game is much more important. These Line of Sight commands offer much for new custom AI functions. You can have now especially custom close range AI e.g. for sneaking missions (have anyone played thief-gameserie?). Make the guards to see things like bodies, suspisious changes in their enviroment. Before there was no good way to check if a civilian saw you or not, also for enemies the knowsabout command was quite limited. For us mission creators new commands like these are gifts from heaven (even I am not religious), keeping us even more interested of the game.

>>> +1

[SaOk 112]

Why you need to check LOS from many kilometers? And e.g. if you check LOS with 1km, you can add just only ~5 nearestobjects with 100m range (or 10 with 50m). It isnt that demanding for computer.

[noubernou 77]

Well for example in ACE we check to make sure the seeker head of a laser guided missile/bomb can actually see the laser dot being painted on the target. For weapons like the hellfire that means the check can happen many kilometers away as the seeker will pick up on the laser dot very far out. The missile flies a fairly low flight profile, in so much that a number of objects might be blocking its line of sight.

Right now we fire a bullet from the missiles seeker head towards the position that the laser spot is at, and we track that bullet till it hits something, then we check the distance from where it hit to where the laser spot is. If its within a certain distance we consider it to be visible. This takes at least two, sometimes more frames of the game to calculate, and it becomes unreliable after a certain range.

If these new functions were more efficient then we'd only need to call one native function that could do essentially what we are doing with the bullet but with their own internal ray casting intersection functions (which they already have coded, almost every 3D game ever made has some sort of ray casting intersection ability and they are very "inexpensive" compared to any solution we can come up with in raw SQF).

Having to provide a list of every object we want to have an intersect checked on is very expensive because the only way to get all objects is nearestObjects and its related commands, which get all objects in a radius of a circle. That intersect line is a very very very small portion of that circles area, so its very expensive and wasteful to have to first get all those objects, then have the function most likely check against a huge percentage of totally unrelated objects.

[Dwarden 1124]

There is a very nice addition of those useless functions but after several new beta patches the issue reported here is still present.

That flickering is more visible when you play with high textures and settings and low object details. Its one of the main reason the game still doesnt look like running smooth for me. Every time you look around or zoom there is this barely perceptible flickering making the game looking unfinished.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=YuBtYM35e2w&vq=hd720

disregard my previous post, that was just description,

we think we can fix it, but what we need is SIMPLE reproduction mission (as we don't have yet youtube video debugging capability)

:) so i'm calling to arms all who can make one and post on CIT (if it's there already then throw URL on me)

the simpler it is and sooner available the faster we can try kill this issue :)

Edited May 31, 2012 by Suma

[neokika 62]

Our apologies for adding the new "useless scripting commands" that seems to bother so many users in this topic. I will make sure this is never going to happen again and please understand that it was not our intention to make you any troubles by including these commands (note that it is generally quite easy and in development time absolutely insignificant, these were already present in TKOH anyway so really no big deal porting it to OA code branch).

Main reason for this beta are not these command but significant fixes in MP (esp. of some issues newly created by the previous beta) which may not be too clear from the change log as we do not include there fixes of issues introduced by betas.

This is more then a welcome addition, thanks for doing this.

[Varanon 892]

be aware that these commands below for LOS checking are computing extensive so use it with extreme caution and only when needed

How expensive are they ? I mean, would it be feasible to use them for, say, a group of AI's in the vicinity of the players each frame ? Or would that already be too much ?

Or, to ask differently, how many times per frame can we call these functions without causing extreme slowdown ?

[On_Sabbatical 11]

You never know what others think. :)

I think that the majority of the posters welcome these commands

You never know what others think. :)

@Maruk,

Sorry man,but i'm not trying to be mean :D (i have no reason to do so)

But ,there are many "important" bugs that are waiting for fixes and it seems that no one is spending some coffes cups on that.

Adding new scripting commands while many major bugs are waiting to be fixed is like giving a bible to someone who is starving.

[maddogx 13]

disregard my previous post, that was just description,

we think we can fix it, but what we need is SIMPLE reproduction mission (as we don't have yet youtube video debugging capability)

:) so i'm calling to arms all who can make one and post on CIT (if it's there already then throw URL on me)

the simpler it is and sooner available the faster we can try kill this issue :)

Thanks Dwarden. :)

I've given it a shot: #16004 note 23.

I hope it's good enough.

[Undeceived 392]

You never know what others think. :)

Nice one! :D

But writing the second quote I just looked at the reactions the posters wrote - no big interpretation involved.

Other than that I surely also support your concerns about the "more important" bugs. It's just that some people awaited for exact such commands - hence the joy. :)

[neokika 62]

How expensive are they ? I mean, would it be feasible to use them for, say, a group of AI's in the vicinity of the players each frame ? Or would that already be too much ?

Yes, that's probably the kind of situation for which the warning is directed. :)

[maddogx 13]

Each frame seems like too much for a visibility check. You can probably get away with doing it every 0.5 seconds, perhaps even less.

You could also store the result and only update it if the objects have moved significantly.

[Dwarden 1124]

Thanks Dwarden. :)

I've given it a shot: #16004 note 23.

I hope it's good enough.

thanks a lot for repro, we will look into it

[afp 1]

disregard my previous post, that was just description,

we think we can fix it, but what we need is SIMPLE reproduction mission (as we don't have yet youtube video debugging capability)

:) so i'm calling to arms all who can make one and post on CIT (if it's there already then throw URL on me)

the simpler it is and sooner available the faster we can try kill this issue :)

Thanks for reply Dwarden, I'm sure its not really a complex fix and can improve the overall view a lot, by removing the flickering. Here are some simple steps to reproduce:

- Windows 7 x64, nvidia geforce GTX560 2G, latest nVidia driver, 16G RAM, i7 3.4GHz.

- Setting like here, please note the object details to minimum so the flickering is even more amplified: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v369/a2000/b4bed929.jpg

- atoc=0 in cfg.

- Open Takistan map, put the Player somewhere on a hill, 2-300 m from a village, like in video.

- Zoom toward village, slowlly move mouse right-left. Some buildings textures flicker.

- This also occurs on many situations, they just cant figure what really happen, probally that's why this issue is not reported, and they confuse it with a low fps, stuttering or something.

Edited June 1, 2012 by afp

[fabrizio_t 58]

I dont care some small the blinking, the game is much more important. These Line of Sight commands offer much for new custom AI functions. You can have now especially custom close range AI e.g. for sneaking missions (have anyone played thief-gameserie?). Make the guards to see things like bodies, suspisious changes in their enviroment. Before there was no good way to check if a civilian saw you or not, also for enemies the knowsabout command was quite limited. For us mission creators new commands like these are gifts from heaven (even I am not religious), keeping us even more interested of the game.

Perfectly agree

[afp 1]

Some people spend much more time tunning, modding or talking about the game than playing it. But I think that overall there are more people less interested in game functions but in gameplay.

[buehgler_as 0]

I dont care some small the blinking, the game is much more important. These Line of Sight commands offer much for new custom AI functions. You can have now especially custom close range AI e.g. for sneaking missions (have anyone played thief-gameserie?). Make the guards to see things like bodies, suspisious changes in their enviroment. Before there was no good way to check if a civilian saw you or not, also for enemies the knowsabout command was quite limited. For us mission creators new commands like these are gifts from heaven (even I am not religious), keeping us even more interested of the game.

+1

I think this is dead on. In addition to these recent betas making some great progress in terms of stability and look of the game, we are getting some critical tools to improve scripted response/reactions of AI. This is something that I expect will significantly increase opportunities for stealth oriented missions, and I appreciate the effort by BIS.

Please keep up the great work.