Bohemia Interactive @ E3 2013 - DISCUSSION

[chortles 263]

At this point though it'd probably come down to "do we have the time" and "how badly do the decision-makers on the dev team want it".

Relevant notes to be found in today's SITREP... in the case of vehicle interiors:

We should also clarify a statement about fully modeled vehicle interiors. Most, but not all vehicles have these rich 3D interiors. The philosophy is similar to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead for the same reasons. Primarily heavy armor driver and gunner positions lack 3D interiors, but their passenger spaces are available!

[Alwarren 2767]

At this point though it'd probably come down to "do we have the time" and "how badly do the decision-makers on the dev team want it".

Relevant notes to be found in today's SITREP... in the case of vehicle interiors:

We should also clarify a statement about fully modeled vehicle interiors. Most, but not all vehicles have these rich 3D interiors. The philosophy is similar to Arma 2: Operation Arrowhead for the same reasons. Primarily heavy armor driver and gunner positions lack 3D interiors, but their passenger spaces are available!

Wonder what that means for the Merkava, it has (in reality) six passenger seats.

[liquidpinky 11]

Wonder what that means for the Merkava, it has (in reality) six passenger seats.

Probably the same idea as the BAF warrior interior.

The Pandur in the ACR DLC wasn't bad from a drivers point of view, more armour like that to drive please BIS. With 6dof support as well. ;)

[Messiah 2]

I disagree.

There's a reason why some people carry secondary weapons, and damaging a weapon like that can have a huge impact on a firefight. One less person means possibly a bullet not hitting an MG, which means an entire squad could die. A real life example of this is during Operation Red Wings, one of the guys took a round through his M110 magazine and it forced him to reload, taking time out of the firefight. Plus, it adds a sense of urgency to the general feel of what's going on at that point in the game. I've hit people's rocket launchers on their backs or their rifles in their hands more times than I can remember. I mean, you play the game enough it's bound to happen, but not every game to be an 'annoyance' like you said.

The point of Arma is to give an authentic experience, and small things like that make a huge difference on your gameplay.

How about the random chance of tripping on a rock, twisting your ankle and having to limp for the entire mission, then?

There's a useful addition, and then there's too far for the sake of it.

[HKFlash 9]

Useful addition? What the hell...

[Tonci87 163]

You just don´t get it guys. BIS has a limited ammount of time and resources, and I would like them to use those resources to make more vehicels instead of interiors that I will look at only once.

Of course BIS could shift priorities and make interiors for tanks, but then we propably would have a few assets less in the game since the designers spent time making those interiors instead of those weapons/vehicles/you name it.

To be honest, I would like tank interiors as well, why not? If the Artists run out of projects towards the release then let them make something, but sadly this isn´t going to happen. So the only way of getting interiors would be to drop other stuff.

Edited June 18, 2013 by Tonci87

[ck-claw 1]

How about the random chance of tripping on a rock, twisting your ankle and having to limp for the entire mission, then?

There's a useful addition, and then there's too far for the sake of it.

lol , i remember back in the Ofp days, where you could easily slip down a sharp incline and knacker your legs!!

Our leader at the time (legs knackered)said fook it, you guys carry on! Rather than restart the mission (man remember the days when in ofp you could have to restart the mission soo many times before it go-eg ppl disconnecting/no jip etc)

We went on to do the mission, he crawled over a km, to get there! we'd all died-he cleaned up a couple of stragglers and finished the mission! lol

Sry for the OT but Messy just bought back a memory :bounce3:

[DaRkL3AD3R 1]

So just to clarify something here based on the SITREP's confirmation about interiors. Right now I drive all my vehicles first person, including Hunters/Ifrits/Offroads. Does this non-interior thing mean if I drive a tank, I will be 100% forced to drive in 3rd person!?!? Because that's a total fail for me if true :(

[Alwarren 2767]

Probably the same idea as the BAF warrior interior.

Likely, though I don't have a clue how the Merkava looks from the inside, and whether the passenger compartment is the same cabin as the crew.

The Pandur in the ACR DLC wasn't bad from a drivers point of view, more armour like that to drive please BIS. With 6dof support as well. ;)

Seconded :) Same as the AAVP, both the commander and driver seat had a nice interior.

---------- Post added at 02:03 ---------- Previous post was at 01:52 ----------

You just don´t get it guys. BIS has a limited ammount of time and resources, and I would like them to use those resources to make more vehicels instead of interiors that I will look at only once.

Wasn't the creed "quality over quantity"? To which I very much agree, as is already apparent since everything I have seen so far in Arma 3 is of very high quality. I also love the little details like how infantry embarks into the Little Bird. They used to make their standard push-up anim and pop into place since Operation Flashpoint, but this kind of stuff makes Arma 3 already (as an Alpha, mind you) look more polished than Arma 2. I'd rather see more of that stuff than "just" more stuff.

And BIS, thank you for the Little Bird "Get In" anims. I really love that stuff :) Please add more of it, even if you do it over time.

[clifdenhill 1]

The Devs will do what the prefer and have time for but personally I'd rather have a few vehicles all with interiors than have alotta vehicles and some with interiors. It's sorta the same with houses is rather be able to go inside them rather than look at the outside.

[pettka 694]

To put you more in perspective, there are going to be two wheeled APCs for Arma 3 Beta. Making interiors for drivers and gunners would mean there would be only one of them because of time constraints. Speaking just for myself, I would prefer to have at least some armoured vehicle for both Blue and Red rather to stand on the side without any such stuff against better equipped enemy with interiors I would never see :icon_twisted:

[Alpha-Kilo 36]

I agree with what Alwarren posted in #384. If I had a say I'd go by the quality-over-quantitiy principle. In an ArmA game this makes sense because additional content may be published later in a patch or a DLC and the community can provide variety as needed. But crippled content breaks immersion and is just off-putting. Attention to detail is a big USP and if resources are limited, it's better to do the stuff one by one instead of releasing a lot of half-finished vehicles. The decision if a feature is needed should be made by the user, not by the designer. And advertising a game as "polished" and publishing another "raw diamond" disappoints at least a part of the audience.

[Wolfstriked 11]

To put you more in perspective, there are going to be two wheeled APCs for Arma 3 Beta. Making interiors for drivers and gunners would mean there would be only one of them because of time constraints. Speaking just for myself, I would prefer to have at least some armoured vehicle for both Blue and Red rather to stand on the side without any such stuff against better equipped enemy with interiors I would never see :icon_twisted:

Put that way of course its better to have 2 APCs. Just please make them more intuitive when in 1st person.Put zoom onto hold mouse and reset zoom on to click Rmouse,heading and bearing indicator onscreen etc.Driving purely from 1st person or commanding from 1st person for extended times needs to feel comfortable as some of your players actually will play the game like that.:j:

[papanowel 120]

Put that way of course its better to have 2 APCs. Just please make them more intuitive when in 1st person.Put zoom onto hold mouse and reset zoom on to click Rmouse,heading and bearing indicator onscreen etc.Driving purely from 1st person or commanding from 1st person for extended times needs to feel comfortable as some of your players actually will play the game like that.:j:

I could not agree more ;) Don't forget the player who only use first person view!

[Alwarren 2767]

To put you more in perspective, there are going to be two wheeled APCs for Arma 3 Beta. Making interiors for drivers and gunners would mean there would be only one of them because of time constraints. Speaking just for myself, I would prefer to have at least some armoured vehicle for both Blue and Red rather to stand on the side without any such stuff against better equipped enemy with interiors I would never see :icon_twisted:

Not wanting to sound disrespectful, but how many modellers are in the 70 man team?

[purepassion 22]

Making interiors for drivers and gunners would mean there would be only one of them because of time constraints.

Outsourcing comes to my mind here. If the financial situation allows it, I am sure there are modellers of whose expertise you could profit

[DnA 5156]

Outsourcing comes to my mind here. If the financial situation allows it, I am sure there are modellers of whose expertise you could profit

I understand your thoughts, but the solutions are hardly ever as simple as just outsourcing, hiring new artists, hiring new programmers, etc. And in this specific case: let's say we have an artist who is not overloaded already with work (we don't). That person may be very skilled doing architectural modeling, but less so doing technical vehicle modeling for example. At this stage of the project every thing comes at a cost - there are no more free and easy decisions. We do our best to make the right ones for the game and its players :)

[fragmachine 12]

Well maybe interiors and some other features could be applied after release?

[gonza 8]

To put you more in perspective, there are going to be two wheeled APCs for Arma 3 Beta. Making interiors for drivers and gunners would mean there would be only one of them because of time constraints. Speaking just for myself, I would prefer to have at least some armoured vehicle for both Blue and Red rather to stand on the side without any such stuff against better equipped enemy with interiors I would never see :icon_twisted:

Totally agree, I prefer that devs spend time in something really needed (Bugfix, gameplay improvement) (improve handling, collision or penetration system of vehicles for example)

I have no problem with tanks in Arma 2 and they have no 3D interior.

[HKFlash 9]

I understand your thoughts, but the solutions are hardly ever as simple as just outsourcing, hiring new artists, hiring new programmers, etc. And in this specific case: let's say we have an artist who is not overloaded already with work (we don't). That person may be very skilled doing architectural modeling, but less so doing technical vehicle modeling for example. At this stage of the project every thing comes at a cost - there are no more free and easy decisions. We do our best to make the right ones for the game and its players :)

Mr. Joris that is perfectly understandable but personally I would have expected that interiors for all vehicles to have been planned when the decision was made to create ARMA 3. Surely we can both agree that this one is a more ambitious, better financed and better developed game than the previous ones?

[fragmachine 12]

I agree that tank interiors are lower priority. I would rather see more features implemented to make the gameengine more powerful, those can be seen in A3 feedback tracker for instance. I wouldn't mind either if interiors could be added after the release as some other features, but gameplay changing features like (in personal priority order):

armor penetration system, bipods, walkable interiors, shooting out of vehicles, surface simulating like "stuck in mud", fire propagating, floods...

should be applied asap

Personally, I would rather like to have more features sported by the engine than making all of them 100% perfect as this can be tweaked all way long after release.

Edited June 19, 2013 by fragmachine
typoooo

[Alwarren 2767]

I understand your thoughts, but the solutions are hardly ever as simple as just outsourcing, hiring new artists, hiring new programmers, etc. And in this specific case: let's say we have an artist who is not overloaded already with work (we don't). That person may be very skilled doing architectural modeling, but less so doing technical vehicle modeling for example. At this stage of the project every thing comes at a cost - there are no more free and easy decisions. We do our best to make the right ones for the game and its players :)

Okay this might sound like totally over the top, but have you considered accepting community submissions for that? Make a competition: "Model the interior of XXX and receive a supporter edition" or something of that nature. And yeah, I am serious about it.

[bumgie 49]

Okay this might sound like totally over the top, but have you considered accepting community submissions for that? Make a competition: "Model the interior of XXX and receive a supporter edition" or something of that nature. And yeah, I am serious about it.

That does sound like a good idea. Just provide some reference and let people have a go at it.

[Droikka 1]

Okay this might sound like totally over the top, but have you considered accepting community submissions for that? Make a competition: "Model the interior of XXX and receive a supporter edition" or something of that nature. And yeah, I am serious about it.

You can't take an addon as a professional studio. Most addons use things from other sources. If someone notices even a small copy from a copyrighted source, the studio gets in a world of shit.

Trust me, it's easier/ saves time to simply make the assets yourself than to receive them from a community. The only option BIS has is to out-source the production of assets. This usually doesn't fall in the quality standards of a studio, as the out-sourced assets are not within the same level of quality as the other assets of a game. This means a large extra production cost and takes a lot of time.

My solution is to have all your assets extremely high-quality, for the community of ArmA will bring the lower quality/ less time consuming content such as re-skins and simple models.

[Masharra 10]

You can't take an addon as a professional studio. Most addons use things from other sources. If someone notices even a small copy from a copyrighted source, the studio gets in a world of shit.

Trust me, it's easier/ saves time to simply make the assets yourself than to receive them from a community. The only option BIS has is to out-source the production of assets. This usually doesn't fall in the quality standards of a studio, as the out-sourced assets are not within the same level of quality as the other assets of a game. This means a large extra production cost and takes a lot of time.

My solution is to have all your assets extremely high-quality, for the community of ArmA will bring the lower quality/ less time consuming content such as re-skins and simple models.

Tell that to UT or minecraft or the numerouss mmo's games that allow members to design everything from maps to clothing.