General Discussion (dev branch)

[Variable 322]

It's almost as bad as the button (the circle left of the clock) that zooms the map view to players location. No need for any navigational skills now. Impossible to make a mission where you are lost and must rely on map and compass. Such an amazing game series, and this last A3 is a big improvement, yet they nerf it with new stupid design decisions that are forced upon us regardless of difficulty.. wtf BIS..?

The good news is that BIS confirmed this is a bug by assigning a dev to fix it. If map aids are turned off via a difficulty setting, this button should not work. Vote up:

http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15266

[Smurf 12]

DnA, is it still planned, to roll the campaign for DEV version first, at least 1 week before?

Yes.

The latter may be staged for a brief period ahead of release, but we are still evaluating that option. If we do, we would kindly ask you to not spoil the experience for others with any discoveries made in devbranch data.

http://dev.arma3.com/sitrep-00030

_______________

And I can only agree with SniperWolf and KillzoneKid; that extra mile on features would be, in the end, more than the sum of it. I know about manpower\resources and the "sandbox experience" but somethings are in the series for so long that makes me sad.

On the bright side, it seems that they're willing to tackle those legacy problems and create a better game.

[chrisb 196]

I think that one thing that comes through, from sort of day one of the Alpha, for me is performance. Now I know many are struggling with it and perhaps that’s down to online servers etc. But for me and the amount of units I want per mission, it works really well and has done from day one.

I don’t play A3 that much, but I do scenario type missions for testing mod/addons, maybe 70ai max, never really beyond that other than simple testing for how many ai until its unplayable, type things, but really its all mainly skirmish type stuff.

Now its always performed really well, I put the game on today and its moved along a couple of updates (dev) since I last had a look, and at my usual fps testing spots I got higher on each one, 3-4fps on average, which is on top of good rates anyhow.

For me the game runs as well if not a little better, considering the upgrade in graphics etc, than A2, although A2 runs well too.

So good job BIS, from my personal perspective, the game is a really good runner.;).

That said, do you know they (ai) ignore a smoke grenade thrown out in-front of them by an enemy unit in hiding, well I should say they did before todays update, will have to test again. That's the vanilla ai, not modded who on the other hand, react to smoke very well on the whole, there again the modded ai react to everything more or less as expected. Will vanilla ai react to smoke, or is this not on the check list, or are they already and I'm doing something wrong ?

[nikiforos 450]

Ofcourse we all love better FPS , but I particullary want the FPS not to drop when AI is engaged. This is the main problem and not having 100 FPS in the editor.

I have 105 FPS in Agia Marina when I put myself on the editor but that doesnt count really. Please BIS make the AI be less heavy in battles.

[chrisb 196]

I find if you put say 150ai on the map, provided you don’t meet more than say 20-30 at any one time, its pretty o.k. even in town. Small ai numbers don’t really cripple the game for me, larger 40 v 40 at one time can reduce fps to mid 30’s or around 40, but that is rare for me, I play smaller skirmish type stuff in A2, so it would be the same in A3, no more than 150-200ai on the map at start, lot less usually, if a mission is well designed, there is no need to overdo what your system can handle.

[metalcraze 290]

There's gotta be some way to unload ballistics onto GPU. Utilize OpenCL or something.

Big AI engagements are so heavy exactly because of all the hundreds of bullets flying around.

[nimrod123 11]

There's gotta be some way to unload ballistics onto GPU. Utilize OpenCL or something.

Big AI engagements are so heavy exactly because of all the hundreds of bullets flying around.

not really. GPU's are fairly stupid. they can do linear really well, but anything more complicated (which that is) is basiclly a no go

[-Coulum- 35]

There's gotta be some way to unload ballistics onto GPU. Utilize OpenCL or something.

Big AI engagements are so heavy exactly because of all the hundreds of bullets flying around.

I always thought it was because of all the pathfinding, cover searching and LOS check that have to be done for each danger mode ai.

[gossamersolid 155]

not really. GPU's are fairly stupid. they can do linear really well, but anything more complicated (which that is) is basiclly a no go

How'd you figure this one out? As far as I know, the whole point to NVIDIA's CUDA is to prove this wrong lol.

[CaptainAzimuth 714]

arma 3 isn't even close to the best or most realistic in any category. it's old and it's quite sad how entrenched developers are these days they won't upgrade.

Doing a little searching around, found out that Arma 3 uses a specific weather engine technology, don't remember the name, but with that engine, it is indeed possible to create low level clouds, and still have the higher layer just as in real life, and that would bring more immersion into Arma 3. I will be fooling around with the scripts later and see if i can come up with anything remotely close. (im not any good at scripts per say, but with a few instructional videos, it doesn't hurt to try)

[progamer 14]

Not sure if this can be addressed at the moment but:

Operating vehicles on a large ship works at the moment but has may bugs/glitches that need to be resolved: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15495 Walking on large ships with the man class right now is lacking whatever the vehicle class has that allows it to move on large ships: http://feedback.arma3.com/view.php?id=15384

[eurybaric 10]

tbh, and i know that's not really helpful, but zubr in arabic sounds like D**k :P. sorry I had to say.

Cheers

[NeuroFunker 11]

tbh, and i know that's not really helpful, but zubr in arabic sounds like D**k :P. sorry I had to say.

Cheers

LOL! Maybe the devs BItrolling us :D. But "zubr" suppossed to be russian. Zub [zoob] is a tooth. Can't say exactly translation, what zubr means tho.

[chortles 263]

I was amazed how customizable the back end for weapons and attachment is, how much thought and effort the programmers have put into making sure the whole thing isn't limited arbitrarily. Even before the compatibleItems change, which then goes on and improves on it even more, you could create custom rails for weapons and you can define which proxy slot they will use, nothing there is hardcoded where I had assumed differently before. And then on the attachments side the only limit is which inventory slot the attachment will use. It feels magical. You go on to create a custom rail, add the rail to the weapon, whitelist some attachments, launch the game and it "just works".

I don't recall who it was, but I recall a dev saying over a year ago that it was hardcoded at three attachments plus the magazine, didn't really go into detail beyond that as to the why.

DnA, is it still planned, to roll the campaign for DEV version first, at least 1 week before? I bet you guys could need a few reports, i guess not everything would be flawless, and all the people awaiting campaign 31 oct, would start another wave of moan and dispare, the campaign is buggy!2121 etc :)

SITREP #00030 basically said "no promises". :p

tbh, and i know that's not really helpful, but zubr in arabic sounds like D**k :P. sorry I had to say.

Cheers

Funny thing is, that actually mirrors what an Egyptian Arma player posted over in Something Awful's Arma 3 thread:

Is it seriously called the Zubr? Because that's Arabic slang for penis.

Someone else posted that it was Czech for "bison". Edited October 18, 2013 by Chortles

[das attorney 857]

I don't recall who it was, but I recall a dev saying over a year ago that it was hardcoded at three attachments plus the magazine, didn't really go into detail beyond that as to the why.

IIRC it was Vespa - he was quite insistent it was to have a definite spec to work to. Obv, people wanted more but he was quite adamant that the devs shouldn't get sidetracked with feature-creep, which is fair enough.

[chortles 263]

That's a rather interesting thing in retrospect considering the "axed features" thread and all the complaining from people who, frankly, expected too much, when over a year ago that in spite of what people might have wanted (complete with him rebutting RobertHammer of all people -- that made me laugh on the inside just to imagine RH's reaction) Vespa went further and declared himself "proud of cutting features" because it meant that they were on track... though, as DnA later revealed, they cut features and still ended up behind schedule... but yeah, feature-creep is a constant problem at a dev studio with an institutional tendency for overambitiousness, and the players' demands don't help at ALL.

[pettka 694]

That's a rather interesting thing in retrospect considering the "axed features" thread and all the complaining from people who, frankly, expected too much, when over a year ago that in spite of what people might have wanted (complete with him rebutting RobertHammer of all people -- that made me laugh on the inside just to imagine RH's reaction) Vespa went further and declared himself "proud of cutting features" because it meant that they were on track... though, as DnA later revealed, they cut features and still ended up behind schedule... but yeah, feature-creep is a constant problem at a dev studio with an institutional tendency for overambitiousness, and the players' demands don't help at ALL.

I would rather call it "cutting ideas" than "cutting features" most of the time. There were some scripted prototypes that could have been called features, but most of the "confirmed" stuff was rather wishful thinking of devs said aloud as something we would like to have in game. No offence meant to anyone, confirming features by community sometimes went somehow like this:

"It's called Arma 3 and they say it is going to be Steam only. That means Half-Life 3 is confirmed!!1One!!!" :icon_twisted:

We are still trying to implement at least some features requested by the community, but bear in mind that everything takes time (and don't count this as a promise of any certain feature to be done, just a fact, that we are going to support A3 for a long time) :icon_twisted:

Edited October 18, 2013 by pettka
Added some formating

[james2464 176]

Lord pettka is going to make us all the things!

Lol kidding. :D

[NeuroFunker 11]

I would rather call it "cutting ideas" than "cutting features" most of the time. There were some scripted prototypes that could have been called features, but most of the "confirmed" stuff was rather wishful thinking of devs said aloud as something we would like to have in game. No offence meant to anyone, confirming features by community sometimes went somehow like this:

"It's called Arma 3 and they say it is going to be Steam only. That means Half-Life 3 is confirmed!!1One!!!" :icon_twisted:

We are still trying to implement at least some features requested by the community, but bear in mind that everything takes time (and don't count this as a promise of any certain feature to be done, just a fact, that we are going to support A3 for a long time) :icon_twisted:

i lol'd seen arma 3 dev, talking about half-life 3! :D

As for me, it's absolutely nothing new to me, things geting cut, redone, or abandoned while game dev. Especially after stalker SoC dissapointment. And all the people moaning and complaining about arma 3 not being finished, dumbed down, are imo living in their own world, with imagery arma 3 with 12325346546 km" landmass, more realistic medical system then in real life, with gore, tanks 10x heavier then real ones, where soldiers geting tired just by holding a single bullet in a hand, and falling ko'd after doing just a single step on foot and spin around 360°C slower then a turtle.. etc etc.

I say, let them live there in their imaginary world, as long as they don't start insult you - the devs, like some of them sadly do, only cause their dreams, don't cross with what arma 3 have become.

[dmarkwick 261]

I would rather call it "cutting ideas" than "cutting features" most of the time. There were some scripted prototypes that could have been called features, but most of the "confirmed" stuff was rather wishful thinking of devs said aloud as something we would like to have in game. No offence meant to anyone, confirming features by community sometimes went somehow like this:

"It's called Arma 3 and they say it is going to be Steam only. That means Half-Life 3 is confirmed!!1One!!!" :icon_twisted:

We are still trying to implement at least some features requested by the community, but bear in mind that everything takes time (and don't count this as a promise of any certain feature to be done, just a fact, that we are going to support A3 for a long time) :icon_twisted:

I understand the pain of conversationally mentioning features you would like to see make it ingame, and then have that represented as promises, and then have the non-development of those ideas represented as cutting :)

[Zorg_DK 10]

BI, I think you should remove NVG's on all soldiers in missions that take place in daylight, such as the combined arms showcase. It looks silly that the AI runs around with NVG's in the middle of the day.

[HKFlash 9]

BI, I think you should remove NVG's on all soldiers in missions that take place in daylight, such as the combined arms showcase. It looks silly that the AI runs around with NVG's in the middle of the day.

For those interested in removing NVG from their missions, here's an example for OPFOR:

	{
	if (side _x == opfor) then 
	{
	_x unassignItem "NVGoggles_OPFOR";  
	_x removeItem "NVGoggles_OPFOR"; 
	};

} foreach (allUnits);

Where "opfor" is, replace with the side you wish to remove the NVG and change the Item classname.

All code is courtesy of kylania.

[60T_Teo 10]

LOL! Maybe the devs BItrolling us :D. But "zubr" suppossed to be russian. Zub [zoob] is a tooth. Can't say exactly translation, what zubr means tho.

Yeah. In our language зуб - [zoobb] - tooth.

But you are wrong. Zubr is an animal (Bison bonasus)

Zubr - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Зубр

[NeuroFunker 11]

Yeah. In our language зуб - [zoobb] - tooth.

But you are wrong. Zubr is an animal (Bison bonasus)

Zubr - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Зубр

ah shame, seems like i'm starting to forget my mother tongue for a bit. I know bizon, but forgot the alternate word zubr! :(

[Varanon 892]

No offence meant to anyone, confirming features by community sometimes went somehow like this

You do have to admit, though, that some features were actually cut. It depends strongly on how they were presented. For example, some videos mentioned the 3d editor as feature for Arma 3. You can argue that it was an "idea" at that time, but it was actually announced, so you could call it a cut "feature" or a cut "idea", it really doesn't matter: In the end, it's not in.

"It's called Arma 3 and they say it is going to be Steam only. That means Half-Life 3 is confirmed!!1One!!!"

You could also say "There's an F-35 on a screenshot. And the screenshot is labeled 'in-game'. That means the F-35 is confirmed". Same goes for some of the scripted prototypes that were presented on earlier videos.

We all know plans change, but please don't make people that complain about features that did not end up in the game look like they can't discern Arma3 from Half-Life 3.