General Discussion (dev branch)

[roberthammer 582]

By the way - when you reload Mk20's GL in prone position , it doesn't work and you get stuck

[Locklear 214]

By the way - when you reload Mk20's GL in prone position , it doesn't work and you get stuck

Thank you. I made some short investigation and it seems our soldiers skipped the "Mk20 EGLM prone reloading" class. They shall attend it next time, after a proper punishment, of course.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

It's not that much about number of animations (although those should be considered, too). One thing is to mind the poly count with adding stuff to a gun's model. More importantly, I mentioned the draw calls. If we just add a grenade with a new texture, we also add a draw call just for the grenade's sake, which has a negative impact on performance. So a better idea is to include the grenade's texture to the gun's one, but that means adjusting the guns model, as well, which obviously takes some time. (You noted Zubr, which was made with all that in mind, contrary to the guns with UGLs.)

 

Thanks for expanding further, I already had understanding of the technicalities of it. :) And yeah, I get that it takes some time, and that doing disproportional amount of work for a smaller detail like that is unrealistic, no doubt about it. :)

 

Zubr was probably a bad example, as it was probably done fairly late in the process, it was the first thing that came to mind with visible projectiles. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure we can dig out numerous assets that have an unnecessary amount of sections, and let's not even talk about assets coming from mods, people nuking the FPS with inconsiderate scripts and the amount of draw calls you can generate by merely having more of unique stuff in the scene.

 

Fretting over a single selection in the context of all that can seem insignificant, as you can take from my first post, but I understand your reasoning. Especially considering there are people who go wild over single FPS loss/gain. Apologies if I sounded harsh.

[Locklear 214]

Apologies if I sounded harsh.

No offense taken, sir. :) I just wanted to point out that there's more to such decision than "let's do it boiz cuz it's cool". ;) We'll see what can be done.

[Sniperwolf572 758]

No offense taken, sir. :) I just wanted to point out that there's more to such decision than "let's do it boiz cuz it's cool". ;) We'll see what can be done.

 

I personally subscribe to what JFK said:

 

 

:P

[x3kj 1247]

If I was BIS I'd consider making making a new 2048*1024 texture with a3\weapons_f\data\gl_holo_co.paa taking up one half (1024*1024) and adding the 40mm grenade textures to the other half. Then simply load the models up in O2, scale the quadrant sight's UV's by 0.5 in the U axis with the transformation centre set to the [0,0] UV coordinate, apply the new combined texture and UV map the grenade to the other half.

 

That way, the section count remains the same since all the GLs use the quadrant sight and already have that additional texture. Texel resolution remains the same for the weapons and the quadrant sight since you're not really doing any major UV-fuckery. And the only performance hit is that the texture file sizes are larger by a few MB - owing to that they're now a 2048*1024 rectangle instead of a 1024*1024 square - but this is still smaller than the standard 2048*2048 panels used for most assets in the game.

I haven't tested it, but it might also be feasible to make a 2048x2048 texture from two 1024 textures and leave the lower half blank. Big solid blocks of one color take barely any memory whatsoever with .paa (.dds) / DXT compression.

 

Btw - for those who are scratching their heads what importance draw calls/ sections have - i made a Biki entry for it. If anyone has further input for the entry feel free to edit it, or contact me. I think sections/draw calls are propably the most overlooked factor by many modders

[vagrantauthor 174]

Would it be possible to have the asset lists to the left and right of Eden's main screen default to collapsed instead of expanded? The same goes for Zeus, actually. I'm a mod user, and the first thing I do when I load into Eden (I already have a habit!) and Zeus is collapse all the menus so I can see the full list of options. This is a minor irritation, for sure, but it's still a desire on my part. Hopefully there are others who feel the same way.

 

If I haven't been clear on what I'm asking, I'll make and post some pictures.

[burkhar 47]

By the way - when you reload Mk20's GL in prone position , it doesn't work and you get stuck

I fixed it just now, fix should be available in Tuesday's Dev Branch.

[h - 169]

 

been getting this error over the last few days. not often but occasionally. Crashes Arma 3 completely as you might expect.

8:25:21 DX11 error : Device removed:  : DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_REMOVED
 8:25:21 DX11 - device removed - reason: DXGI_ERROR_DEVICE_HUNG
 8:25:23 EPE manager release (0|28|0)

Welcome to the club, although been having those like months now..

Using Nvidia GPU by any change?

[da12thMonkey 1943]

So we'll probably prototype that to investigate possibilities and evaluate plausibility.

 

In the spirit of experimenting with the texture allocation and performance of the EGLMs during the process of these improvements:

 

Has any consideration been given to applying Collimator/texCollimator type .rvmat shader technology to the GL red-dots in the view Pilot LOD, in order to bring them to visual standard with other collimator sights in the game?

 

I was curious whether there might be problems using the collimator shader on this type of rotating optic as built in to the weapon model, rather than as a static proxy attachment.

[2nd ranger 282]

Fixed: kbtell was ignoring _disableRadio parameter and sentences were always disabled during a conversation

 

 

This is in BIS_fnc_kbTell? Anyway, could we please get some documentation on the function? It seems there's a very specific folder and file structure needed to use it that hasn't been detailed anywhere, certainly not in the function notes. I figured it out recently but it still seems like alot of extra work having to basically copy the .bikb file into cfgSentences when the conversation text is read from the bikb anyway. Is the function better for multiplayer? The regular kbTell and kbWasSaid commands sometimes don't work properly in MP. For example, sentences tend to play early even if there's a kbWasSaid check before the next line. Kbtell can be a great asset to mission makers and the function has alot of useful features, but we've had very little official documentation.

[froggyluv 2130]

Also would love more documentation of ktbell, it seems say3D doesn't work as well as it once did in terms of feeling spacial so I'd like to make the switch

[instagoat 133]

Anybody else have a problem with tracers not showing up in the past couple of dev branch patches? I just tried the game both without and with mods, and in both cases no gun tracers worked. Not from vehicles or infantry. Especially obvious with the all-tracer MG belts: nothing shows up.

[DancZer 65]

About the GL: I think it would be better to have a shell with a nasty texture, than plugging air into the hole.

 

Edit: Most of the time i don't see the animations because it's in my peripheral, but it's noticeable if something is missing. 

[ceeeb 147]

In current Dev build, the Camp Maxwell missions in the Survive campaignette start with exploding vehicles, coloured marker arrows everywhere, script errors etc.

 

Hmmm, I'm having more trouble, this time in Adapt/Bomos. The Bomos mission starts, but player starts controlling a character standing around near Stavrou. The player's character starts in the walking animation (as Kerry should be), but does not move. Player control is not returned (cinematic borders remain on screen), but Stavrou does his speech, player regains some control, but remains stuck to the ground (can fire, throw grenades and attempt to move (animations play, but no actual movement. Player can't turn or alt-look, can't move, can't open inventory. If player changes stance an endless animation loop starts)

 

Reverting the mission does not help, same result.

 

Suspected cause is the quitting a base "hub" mission in one dev build, letting time and several builds pass by, and then attempting to play it in a latter dev build. Potentially this could be an issue for stable build users too, hub missions are a natural place to break play and I've only only had this issue on hub missions. 

[R3vo 2652]

Did you guys change the firing speed of the miniguns? It feels like they are firing way faster than before.

[somesangheili 111]

Jogging with no weapons acts like you have binos equipped. Look at your left hand while jogging - it is holding invisible binos, plus there are 2x footstep sounds

 

Anybody else have a problem with tracers not showing up in the past couple of dev branch patches? I just tried the game both without and with mods, and in both cases no gun tracers worked. Not from vehicles or infantry. Especially obvious with the all-tracer MG belts: nothing shows up.

Yeah I saw this too, then I switched it to night time and then the tracers showed up... 0.o

[haleks 8206]

I found out that nearestObjects & nearEntities stop working with getposASL in some occasions.

While calling something like _list = getposASL player nearEntities ["Man", 100]; does work most of the time, using it around this location (for instance) :

will always return an empty array. Calling _list = player nearEntities ["Man", 100]; does return all entities though.

 

This is happening on the current RC, can you guys check it out on dev?

[Varanon 892]

Anybody else have a problem with tracers not showing up in the past couple of dev branch patches? I just tried the game both without and with mods, and in both cases no gun tracers worked. Not from vehicles or infantry. Especially obvious with the all-tracer MG belts: nothing shows up.

 

I guess this is related to the change here:

* Fixed: Cannons actually use shells instead of bullets because even shells have their tracers

 

I just stumbled upon this problem in CUP vehicles: My AH-1Z's 20mm gun worked, but the AH-64's 30mm gun didn't. The former uses a BulletBase derived ball, the latter one a ball derived from B_30mm_HE, which is now derived from ShellBase. The effect is that it is no longer sufficient to have a "memoryPointGun", you need gunBeg and gunEnd.

 

However, what completely breaks with shells is muzzle flashes. selectionFireAnim  does NOT work with shells. This can even be seen with the AH-99. The 20mm gun has a muzzle flash in stable, but none in dev branch.

[Varanon 892]

I've been thinking about this bullet/shell change, and I can find little sense in that. A shell to me is something like a 105 mm shell fired from a tank main gun. 20mm projectiles are basically bullets, big bullets, but bullets. Why convert those to shells and lose the muzzle flashes ? I mean, muzzle flashes can be animated, but I would like to know why this change was done.

 

Especially considering that it will likely break a LOT of mods

[killzone_kid 1326]

I found out that nearestObjects & nearEntities stop working with getposASL in some occasions.

While calling something like _list = getposASL player nearEntities ["Man", 100]; does work most of the time, using it around this location (for instance) :

will always return an empty array. Calling _list = player nearEntities ["Man", 100]; does return all entities though.

 

This is happening on the current RC, can you guys check it out on dev?

You need to familiarise yourself with Position https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Position. I have added to nearEntities and nearObjects that if you use 3 element array it has to be in PositionAGL format, definitely not ASL...

[whiztler 135]

Question, why is Eden added as a dependency to the mission.sqm file even when one is not using Eden?

"A3_Structures_F_Walls",
"3DEN",
"A3_Air_F_Heli_Heli_Light_01",

EDIT: Nvm, just figure out it has no effect on stable.

[instagoat 133]

I guess this is related to the change here:

* Fixed: Cannons actually use shells instead of bullets because even shells have their tracers

 

I just stumbled upon this problem in CUP vehicles: My AH-1Z's 20mm gun worked, but the AH-64's 30mm gun didn't. The former uses a BulletBase derived ball, the latter one a ball derived from B_30mm_HE, which is now derived from ShellBase. The effect is that it is no longer sufficient to have a "memoryPointGun", you need gunBeg and gunEnd.

 

However, what completely breaks with shells is muzzle flashes. selectionFireAnim  does NOT work with shells. This can even be seen with the AH-99. The 20mm gun has a muzzle flash in stable, but none in dev branch.

 

I see.

 

I guess the real world has no bearing on what the definitions in the code are, but strictly all are bullets, ball is a solid shot without filler and shells are all bullets with fillers. So, techically, explosive bullets like the soviet 7.62 marker bullet are shells.

 

But game code wise, how do both classes relate to tracers working/not working? Tank rounds had tracers and have had them for ages, they just turned invisible way before every other round. The tanks also have muzzle flashes, or are those made differently than the ones on rifles and the autocannons?

[killzone_kid 1326]

Question, why is Eden added as a dependency to the mission.sqm file even when one is not using Eden?

"A3_Structures_F_Walls",
"3DEN",
"A3_Air_F_Heli_Heli_Light_01",

EDIT: Nvm, just figure out it has no effect on stable.

 

It probably exists elsewhere as it does this http://pastie.org/private/fyqtz4oir6hck4fke46ha when I simply start dedicated server

[twisted 127]

one question - Eden makes it easy to make multiple units playable. does this same functionality extend into scripting - so we can make Ai playable and vice versa easily ? that would be soooooo useful for missions.