General Discussion (dev branch)

[nikiforos 450]

Yes it's good to be honest but why wait so many months before recognizing the problem?

A lot of people had hopes that something good will happen regarding optimizations but now their dreams are shattered.

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

Yes it's good to be honest but why wait so many months before recognizing the problem?

A lot of people had hopes that something good will happen regarding optimizations but now their dreams are shattered.

Yes, those dreams i had as i played the Beta. I told myself "cmon, it´s a Beta, Performance will raise in the final release"

Much dreams never come true, in Arma it´s the same. And it´s so sad cause its a great game which deserves better Performance

[blackpixxel 53]

There is a new bug with the Hellcat:

Each bullet is green on its first ~100m, but then it turns into a red tracer bullet with the old splash damage.

That means: You cannot destroy buildings if you are close to them, but if you are far away you can.

I think it is the same with the Pawnee, except the fact that both bullet types are red.

I hope this will get fixed soon..

[k0rd 3]

...and I don't remember APCs making a massive dogs dinner of a simple left turn, bashing repeatedly into a building corner because they made the turn too early.

funny, it's always the right turns that i see them crap out on. maybe it's like toilet water on opposing hemispheres of the earth?

[pettka 694]

Just to make it clear, we are working on the optimization and it is an ongoing task (as may be seen in the changelogs and all the BROREPs). I have just clearly stated that using resources depends on mission makers too, our missions are optimized even in this way. But throwing hundreds of AIs to some frenetic urban battle and expecting no performance hit would seem funny to every game developer :icon_twisted:

[jgbtl292 0]

I want to have the AI Tanks from OFP resistance back. which were very good for large battles with better FPS. The AI TANK was a Tank with no units inside. one ai one tank ;) and for many missions you dont need the ai in tanks.

you see the ai NOT ! and you have 2 ai more in an tank .....

AI tanks were very good for coop cti and other missions to hostile presentation and good enough for that.

normal tank groups 4 tanks 12 AI !!!

AI Tanks or APC 4 vehicles 4 AI ;)

4x more units with the same fps in the field ;) bring them back !

Edited April 26, 2014 by JgBtl292

[danny96 80]

@JgBtl292

Yeah it would be cool If there was checkbox in every vehicle edit interface saying "Virtual crew" and If you marked it you got car controlling itself without crew :D

[bad benson 1733]

i get the whole non player centric bla bla, but this is really just a bad excuse for lack of developement. just look at what the Alive guys did.

arma can't pride itself with freedom and open environments and at the same time offer nothing that is taking that into account. why this game still has no inbuilt unit caching is beyond me..."ai can fail a mission"-my ass. the engagements in the campaign were so small that i ask myself why they bothered wasting all this time and resources on making that unoptimized Altis.

it's like saying: "yea we built this wooden plane and put a rocket engine on it. sure it will just rip apart when you actually fly it but it's your own fault for not just letting it sit in the hangar and looking at it doing nothing."

instead we get a 3d editor without or visitor/TB export. *slow clap*

if there's ever an arma 4, i hope that the game will take its own size into account. otherwise it's all just fake. like taking a normal shooter and just making the maps huge and then say: "the map is huge, of course it runs like shit".

But throwing hundreds of AIs to some frenetic urban battle and expecting no performance hit would seem funny to every game developer

i'm pretty sure that's not what people are talking about. it's the otehr way around. the size of the vanilla campaign engagements (tiny) are a testament to what the game is actually capable of at the moment (not much).

[Tonci87 163]

Just to make it clear, we are working on the optimization and it is an ongoing task (as may be seen in the changelogs and all the BROREPs). I have just clearly stated that using resources depends on mission makers too, our missions are optimized even in this way. But throwing hundreds of AIs to some frenetic urban battle and expecting no performance hit would seem funny to every game developer :icon_twisted:

It is really not that simple Pettka, my FPS drops in quite small missions and in the campaigns too. It´s everywhere as soon as there is a few groups of AI. Could you guys please provide some kind of simple benchmark scenario with a few AI Groups fighting? We´ll report to you our FPS during the benchmark and on the same spot in an empty Editor. Maybe we can see some pattern wich user hardware or settings?

[Bouben 3]

It is really not that simple Pettka, my FPS drops in quite small missions and in the campaigns too. It´s everywhere as soon as there is a few groups of AI. Could you guys please provide some kind of simple benchmark scenario with a few AI Groups fighting? We´ll report to you our FPS during the benchmark and on the same spot in an empty Editor. Maybe we can see some pattern wich user hardware or settings?

Can you make a repro-mission? I would like to test it and report my FPS.

Or...maybe a proper benchmark mission with predefined scenario would do better job (but I am unable to program it).

Anyway, it is absolutely crucial that we all test the same benchmark mission. It has to be absolutely exact on each computer.

[.kju 3244]

The problem is that people have seen way larger numbers of AI work fine in OFP, A1, A2 and OA - both FPS wise and behavior wise.

What people criticize is not the state of things alone, but the massive degradation in various areas over time and sadly A3 has reached another low point here.

People play the series not to have small engagements. The scale of terrain, AI+player numbers and gameplay made this series unique.

The sad part is that A3 has not put emphasis on the key areas people care about but others of little relevance for the most part.

Edited April 27, 2014 by .kju [PvPscene]

[jgbtl292 0]

People play the series not to have small engagements

100% agree

when this is the basic way of thinking then i need no one island - then better the way of all the other games- small but differend locations. because nobody needs a big world,to 75% at all corners looks the same. and each mission the feeling of a constant repetition. when i can oly use 20-30 ai ^^

[nomisum 129]

;2676208']The problem is that people have seen way larger numbers of AI work fine in OFP' date=' A1, A2 and OA - both FPS wise and behavior wise.

[/quote']

this exactly. the game improved on certain levels quite a bit but there is also a lot of stagnation (action menu, terrain textures, physics despite physx) and even some degrading (no female civs, lack of interieur, ai perf hit & driving).

Sent from mobile

[nikiforos 450]

Ok we have tanks, aircraft and so many other vehicles to play with but we can't play with them because the engine and the performance are not allowing that. Just a thought , why put vehicles and aircraft in the game if the engine limits the performance and people can't enjoy playing with them. Make small maps, remove vehicles( I love them but they are not good for multiplayer performance)and put emphasis on infantry only. Reduce the amount of good stuff but make the game playable and less buggy so people can actually enjoy it without thinking about performance and FPS drops in every session they play. And to make my self clear the only reason I "complain" is because I love Arma and I wanted it to be the best game ever.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Nikiforos

[TSAndrey 1]

Ok we have tanks, aircraft and so many other vehicles to play with but we can't play with them because the engine and the performance are not allowing that. Just a thought , why put vehicles and aircraft in the game if the engine limits the performance and people can't enjoy playing with them. Make small maps, remove vehicles( I love them but they are not good for multiplayer performance)and put emphasis on infantry only. Reduce the amount of good stuff but make the game playable and less buggy so people can actually enjoy it without thinking about performance and FPS drops in every session they play. And to make my self clear the only reason I "complain" is because I love Arma.

Smaller maps? No vehicles? If I wanted that I would play COD or BF. Arma with smaller maps and no vehicles isn't arma!

[.kju 3244]

The real answer in terms of terrains would have been:

1) Make 3 mid size terrains like in OFP instead of one huge.

2) Reduce complexity in terrain where its just a gimmick and put emphasis on gameplay elements.

3) Reduce complexity in terms of visuals to free up resources from both GPU and CPU.

4) Not look into diving and underwater as its really a non element - if you want to have a focus on water, it should have been above water and for vehicles and not infantry.

5) To me the whole replicate a real location as the prime focus is not helpful. Interesting, diverse gameplay and good performance should been have the key driving factors - to use real world data is just a means to achieve that.

[Azzur33 1]

Lets see.

We now have Altis, which is huuuuge, complex and rather heavy. Still I love it, and mainly use it for my missions.

We have Stratis, not so big, and not so heavy.

Then we have the chance to use official maps and addon maps from previous games. And newer addon maps too.

If you want complexity and size, you've got it. If you want performance, you've got it.

You can have/make huge combined arms battles with heavy complex maps with high setting if you have the hardware, or smaller fights on lighter maps if you want 60 fps without drops. Both can be lots of fun.

Lots of variety.

That's why I play Arma, and not other war games.

[barakokula31 10]

Oh, I have a suggestion: Stop with the offtopic whining!

[SaOk 112]

I dont think the map size is affecting much, the same stutter is there also with the biggest city/airfield on Stratis when there is some AI around. And less detailed areas in Altis and Stratis are both as smooth. Overally FPS stays 40-60 when checked with diag_fps, there is just some strange stutter over that making 40 feel like around 16.

[Tonci87 163]

Yeah I don´t think it is about the island too. Altis is fine and I´m happy to have such a huge diverse island.

Ok we have tanks, aircraft and so many other vehicles to play with but we can't play with them because the engine and the performance are not allowing that. Just a thought , why put vehicles and aircraft in the game if the engine limits the performance and people can't enjoy playing with them. Make small maps, remove vehicles( I love them but they are not good for multiplayer performance)and put emphasis on infantry only. Reduce the amount of good stuff but make the game playable and less buggy so people can actually enjoy it without thinking about performance and FPS drops in every session they play. And to make my self clear the only reason I "complain" is because I love Arma and I wanted it to be the best game ever.

Honestly If I wanted to have that then I would be playing CoD or Insurgency, there would be no point in playing Arma. No vehicles :icon_ohmygod:

Also this +1:

The problem is that people have seen way larger numbers of AI work fine in OFP, A1, A2 and OA - both FPS wise and behavior wise.

What people criticize is not the state of things alone, but the massive degradation in various areas over time and sadly A3 has reached another low point here.

People play the series not to have small engagements. The scale of terrain, AI+player numbers and gameplay made this series unique.

The sad part is that A3 has not put emphasis on the key areas people care about but others of little relevance for the most part.

[VanZant 48]

The same here. Altis or big islands are not the problem itself. Neither the reason that the vehicles get stuck every 100 meters.

[danil-ch 165]

Smarter AI = worse perfomence.

OFP wasn't optimise for anything more than 300-400 units.

A1 is the only game in the series, which can handle massive battles up to 1000 AI. (even without multi-core support)

A2 has reduce number up to 500-600 units. (thanks to micro AI and increased combat ranges)

A3 has reduced it even more - 300 units. (thanks to PhysX and increased combat ranges)

[nikiforos 450]

So give us the chance to make AI "less" smart so we can play with more AI units and reasonable frames. The AI right now will take you out with headshots from very long distances , which IMO is not very realistic. People say more more I say more realistic expectations and better balance between performance and AI handling.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Nikiforos

[jgbtl292 0]

mhhh a smaler range mh - yes for infantry is this more real - but not in the game - the normal optic for a normal infantrymen in the game has a 10x -12x zoom ^^ that insane on overpowered - for DMR normal and ok but for the normal rifle men ?!?

the game is in this point from a infantrymen view overpowered and you have no alternative in the game ( iron sight and red dots are not a alternative ^^) ;)

[PenguinInATuxedo 18]

I use the RCO sight very effectively up to about 600m-700m.