KEYS: No action menu

[jumpinghubert 48]

Opening and closing of the door automated for vehicles.

yes, because opening a door in real life is more intuitively/automatic.

[St. Jimmy 272]

New update video! Chutes and Ladders:

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More soon

What you're doing is something that i really expected the most in Arma 3 and it was a huge disappoint that there wasn't any real improvement. These are the real user friendly improvements. These should be in the base engine.

[Hobosan 10]

I suppose a bromance would be in order, with such amazing skills to tweak out the basic core of arma that has been riddeled with stupid intergration from the start.

I am really looking forward to a release, as this in my book will make the interface as a whole, and how you interact with the game, really bring it up to a simulation level first of all, and make the game feel alive compared to the clunky system that is currently being used.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

[RushHour 11]

I´m speechless. And a bit shocked at why these things isn´t in the game already from BI´s perspective.

The original door system is an utter joke frankly.

I look forward to this very much.

[riouken 15]

Your doing some great work, keep it up. If you need anything feel free to ask.

[clifdenhill 1]

There's not much to say except that the mod your making is amazing :)

[[aps]gnat 28]

Very cool

[St. Jimmy 272]

Hey Sakura. Have you considered doing something like this to release number keys for weapon selection etc? One thing also that has bothered me in AI commanding, it's in the ticket also, is that there isn't a way to open the main category like this so you have to learn those.

Is it possible to do that you have weapon selections in 1...0 keys and commanding happens also with 1...0 keys but of course you don't change weapons when you're commanding with 1...0 keys or does BI need to do some changes in the engine?

[Redphoenix 1539]

You really should work together with the guy who is doing the Advanced Vehicle Interaction.

[Minoza 11]

You really should work together with the guy who is doing the Advanced Vehicle Interaction.

+1 just saw that, it's amazing!

[adanteh 58]

You really should work together with the guy who is doing the Advanced Vehicle Interaction.

Everyone wants it!

[clifdenhill 1]

You really should work together with the guy who is doing the Advanced Vehicle Interaction.

+1 it could be beneficial to work together :D

[trini scourge 1]

Great work! Hopefully BIS will realize how important UI is to the overall experience.

[defk0n_NL 2]

Their is nothing wrong with the action menu.

Does anyone really rather go gnu emacs? (Enter meta alt control super)

[adanteh 58]

Their is nothing wrong with the action menu.

Does anyone really rather go gnu emacs? (Enter meta alt control super)

At least I know when I press a button that way it does what I want to. Now I walk up to a vehicle, the driver moves a centimeter and suddenly I'm placing explosives. Heck, this isn't even really something that completely removes the action menu. It just removes the unneccesary actions (Switch weapon. Are you kidding me?) and replaces those by either normal key bindings or in the case of things like doors and so it turns into into an actual working action key function. Right now there are default action key functions, but those work terrible (As dyslexci showed. Heck, Dyslexci's video barely even discussed the actual action menu. 95% of it was about the default action key)

[St. Jimmy 272]

Their is nothing wrong with the action menu.

Does anyone really rather go gnu emacs? (Enter meta alt control super)

Test in buildings with explosive specialst and open doors for some time. Hope that you don't kill yourself with the bombs, don't get frusturated when you're placing and deactivating mines when you are 1mm off from the door and after you're out of mines and explosives and somehow alive don't get frusturated about changing to your pistol when you try to open the doors. Oh and sometimes it's even impossible to say what's the door that you're trying to open if there are two or more doors. It and how the default action is in the list are the biggest flaw in Arma.

He is using normal rifleman so it's not even that bad.

[sakura_chan 9]

I was starting to work on the gear interaction, and I've found that the existing system has been dramatically improved. In A2/A3 Alpha and early beta you had the old problem of having to be in the perfect position to get the gear option. In the current beta it seems to be based on cursortarget, so as long as you are looking at it, it will give you the gear option. I had no problem using crates and even dead bodies were easy to interact with. Does anyone have any gripes with the current system?

[raven_jj 1]

I agree, it seems to be greatly improved. One thing I would change is icon placement. Instead of in the middle of the screen, I would use your method- on an object you interact with.

[enex 11]

I agree, it seems to be greatly improved. One thing I would change is icon placement. Instead of in the middle of the screen, I would use your method- on an object you interact with.

What do you mean?Like instead of current to a door handle (placed on where door handle is) on a door of hunter? [example]

[raven_jj 1]

I was referring to using the gear interaction. I mean when you walk to a soldier and try to enter his gear, in vanilla game it already works quite reliably. The only change needed would be to change the icon placement method to be "glued" to a backpack, or soldiers torso, instead of the middle of the screen. Just to be on par with the rest of the mod. In hunter, or other car it could be the back of a trunk.

I also agree, that cooperation with Advanced Vehicle Interaction author would be beneficial for everyone- community wouldn't have to choose between two great mods, and it could become a standard, like ACE.

[sakura_chan 9]

I've looked at the Advanced Vehicle Interaction, it doesn't seem to have any overlapping concepts. My system doesn't run when the player is in a vehicle. As far as I can tell they will be totally compatible.

[adanteh 58]

It does run when you're outside of a vehicle though and his last video mostly getting in and out of vehicles as well, that looks quite similar to what you're doing.

[sakura_chan 9]

Hmm I see.

[enex 11]

The only change needed would be to change the icon placement method to be "glued" to a backpack, or soldiers torso, instead of the middle of the screen.

Thanks for elaboration, I understand now clearly.

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From what I see I would love to see this concept/great mod worked into http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?162952-BTK-Wirecutter&highlight=cutting+fence

You pick up fence cutters, and cut fence.Those kinds of things would be game changer because it would serve as proof of concept that old style ACE loading

bars can say goodbye and that we can say hello to physical picking object and interacting with them further.

[sakura_chan 9]

Well the full version of A3 is out now so I'm glad to report that nothing in my addon was broken by it. I've recently been going through the default action menu commands and fixing them up. I've deleted quite a few, I've added new quick icons to many commands. I'll be posting a new video soon but I'm at work right now so here are just a few things that I'll type out.

Getting into vehicles

Because my addon can't automatically place get in markers on vehicles, removing the get in action menu commands would disable any user addons. I discovered a huge fix for finding the right position to get in. The action menu determines what action should be at the top of the action menu depending on two factors; priority and distance. If there is a difference in priority then it will use the priority value, if there are two actions with equal priority then it will use the distance to determine it. So, by changing all the get in commands to use the same priority, the game selects the nearest get in position as the top priority. You could then run up to an empty chopper's side door and not have to scroll down to find the cargo action.

Weapon handling

There were a few unnecessary commands relating to weapon selection and use. I removed the switch weapon commands because they are better off as keyboard commands. No more "reload" action menu, again, keyboard command. If you have a weapon with multiple magazine types, pressing the reload key no longer switches magazines. It is done through the action menu only now. Because the player will now have no ever-present action menu commands, the switch magazine action will be the only one present if it is available. If you fire off all the rounds from your current mag type, reloading will still automatically switch to the next mag type. I haven't done much work on it yet, but I am looking at a complete replacement for the "put" weapons like mines and satchels.

Old redundant commands

I've removed a lot of duplicate stuff, here is an incomplete list:

Turn in / turn out

Manual fire

Autohover on/off

Lights on/off

gear up/down

flaps up/down

inventory/gear

reload

get out

eject

Engine on

refuel (its done automatically, also removed the flashing text)

repair (its done automatically, also removed the flashing text)

switch launcher

switch pistol

Enhanced commands

I did some iconography and tweaks to some commands to highlight their usefulness

Rearm: New icon, this command is a great way to quickly grab random crap from vehicles and ammo crates without using the gear menu

Use first aid kit: New icon, clearer description.

Take/release controls: New icons

Collision lights on/off: Still in action menu because I can't find a scripted replacement. I did link it to the 'binocular" command so in an aircraft pressing "b" will turn them on or off

Movetoposition commands: removed the icons, in a vehicle it looks much better without an icon in your line of sight.

Still todo

Some things I have plans for but haven't worked on yet

Bind key to artillary computer

everything to do with satchel charges and mines

healing soldiers

engineers repairing vehicles

carrying soldiers

flag take/return

All commands for taking individual items off the ground.

My actual KEYS system

Its been getting a lot of attention lately. I've been developing the vehicle interaction commands and icons. You will still play an animation like you normally would when you get into a vehicle, and it respects all the default "get in rules" such as the locked vehicle system and you can't get into occupied seats. Still working on seats that require an open door to get in. I've also decided to keep the default gear interaction system, due to BIS fixing it to an acceptable level. I did add a 3D icon that will highlight an object if you can use the inventory action on it. No action menu though, just the gear keyboard command. I added some icons to the physical object interaction system, it will change depending on what hands you have available, ei left, right, both empty, hands full. I will be adding KEYS to the Altis buildings, but fortunately (for me haha) Altis only added a few new buildings with doors.

On a performance note, I had a huge increase in optimization that lets most of the code execute only a few times a second, instead of per frame. I can run it on my little laptop without any performance impact, and I could tell because it has a AMD 1.5ghz core. Before the optimization there was some stuttering and flashing icons.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Sakura_Chan