No women at all

[Crash 10]

Looking good, Carl. I mean, REALLY looking good.

[RSF TheCapulet 59]

I agree with you it is an incredible amount of work to add females to the game. The issue I see is why is this being looked at as an after thought? Most creative circles would have made provisions to allow this to work from the start. Like you said its not that much different from ARMA 2 we have proven that most things can be ported surely the guys with the actual SDK and tools to use more high end programs could do it.

The issue you have is because you failed to look at the bigger picture. The skeleton they're using is incredibly old. It wasn't until DayZ that they started building a new skeleton. And by then, Arma 3 was already too far along it's development cycle to suddenly switch such an important part of the foundation of the game. So with that in mind, there's only one skeleton they had available for Arma 3, which is a male skeleton. Throwing up a half baked implementation of females just to be politically correct or to fit in with your idea of most creative circles would have been a very stupid thing to do from any proper development standpoint. So you're left with male soldiers and male civilians. The beauty of it is this; if you need female characters, you can just mod them in yourself. BI on the other hand just didn't need them.

[pathetic_berserker 4]

The beauty of it is this; if you need female characters, you can just mod them in yourself. BI on the other hand just didn't need them.

Um yeah sure.

The beauty of BIS supporting modding is that we can create additions for the game, not to complete it.

Keeping my fingers crossed we get the DayZ females. I'll forgive them waiting till after the DayZ release.

[mistyronin 1181]

My theory is that due lack of time, they have delayed the women in the game as with some other features. In the first episode it didn't make sense to have the women, as Altis is a militarized island, but I guess that in the next episode we will see civilians from Altis ( as this time is a normal island with lots of villages and towns ).

Again this is my theory.

[Crash 10]

In the first episode it didn't make sense to have the women, as Altis is a militarized island...

Oh man, I hope for your sake their are no military females reading the forums... :eek::p

[mistyronin 1181]

Oh man, I hope for your sake their are no military females reading the forums... :eek::p

Hahaha yeah, but you got the point. I'm not against women in the military, in fact my best commander in the Army was a woman; but are not precisely the most common sight in a military place.

[PN11A 2]

The issue you have is because you failed to look at the bigger picture. The skeleton they're using is incredibly old. It wasn't until DayZ that they started building a new skeleton. And by then, Arma 3 was already too far along it's development cycle to suddenly switch such an important part of the foundation of the game. So with that in mind, there's only one skeleton they had available for Arma 3, which is a male skeleton. Throwing up a half baked implementation of females just to be politically correct or to fit in with your idea of most creative circles would have been a very stupid thing to do from any proper development standpoint. So you're left with male soldiers and male civilians. The beauty of it is this; if you need female characters, you can just mod them in yourself. BI on the other hand just didn't need them.

Well Capulet allow me to explain some things,

I am creating a mod to make female special operations soldiers so I am indeed aware that you can mod woman yourself. Can you really say they are supporting modding? They have not released MLODS, if they have half created female assets they could have released them as well. The skeleton is a scale issue, I don't mind making females the exact same hight as males but the animations and movements are going to be masculine. That said when you are creating a game concept designed to mimic real life, you have to consider adding females in the game for that purpose alone if not for anything else. Its not my idea of what most "creative circles" its my university's idea, its my background in design and its just common sense. So in that sense alone they need females to complete the world. If you followed the other thread, I mainly asked that they deliver something to help us make them and not just leave us hanging creating an assets for their game from scratch. Sad thing is without getting to much into it I think its terrible that they are relying on add-on makers to complete a game that they marketed as a full version. If EA, ND, or Nintendo did something like this they would be run out of town.

[dm 9]

Can you really say they are supporting modding? They have not released MLODS

You don't need MLODs in order to be able to mod.

[old man rant mode]Back in my day, we modded for the challenge, the first mods were made without any tools without any MLODs (we didn't even know they existed back then). The first addons were made through hours of trial and error, when eventually we were able to make "new" models by moving the verts around in existing p3ds.

Now it seems, it is impossible to make addons unless BI spoon feeds the community everything they need?

Kids these days :j: [/old man rant mode]

[bad benson 1733]

Now it seems, it is impossible to make addons unless BI spoon feeds the community everything they need?

Kids these days :j: [/old man rant mode]

the problem is not the model but the animations. if you have a mocap set up at home feel free to make us some proper ones :p

the thing is. in ofp everything looked kinda crappy since it wasn't at such a high technical standard. good luck making a full set of anims that don't look ridiculously unnatural compared to what is in the game.

so yea. the gap will be and has already been filled (to a degree). but as expected it has it's insurmountable awkwardnesses. yes it has it's funny charm. but let's be honest. the days where a few polies and a texture are enough, are over.

[dm 9]

the problem is not the model but the animations. if you have a mocap set up at home feel free to make us some proper ones :p

And you still don't need MLODs for that either ;)

the thing is. in ofp everything looked kinda crappy since it wasn't at such a high technical standard. good luck making a full set of anims that don't look ridiculously unnatural compared to what is in the game.

To be fair, no one ever achieved that for OFP either...

so yea. the gap will be and has already been filled (to a degree). but as expected it has it's insurmountable awkwardnesses. yes it has it's funny charm. but let's be honest. the days where a few polies and a texture are enough, are over.

Exactly, everything is much harder to achieve to the A3 standard (that is why there is less content than before - it takes increasingly more time/effort to make something than before). An artist working 8 hours a day would expect to take a week, maybe two to make the T-72 in OFP, then it was 4 to 6 weeks in Arma, then 6 to 8 weeks in Arma 2, now 8 to 10 weeks in A3.

Still, you don't need to be spoon fed MLODs, tutorials, tools or whatever in order to achieve anything - again, in the OFP days many people wrote their own tools. Something the "community" seems mostly incapable of doing these days.

[PN11A 2]

Um yeah sure.

The beauty of BIS supporting modding is that we can create additions for the game, not to complete it.

Keeping my fingers crossed we get the DayZ females. I'll forgive them waiting till after the DayZ release.

Im glad you posted this because maybe I'm speaking a different language people don't seem to understand me to today. Using mod community to complete a game is not ok, and if you do choose to go that route give them adequate tools to work with.

[bad benson 1733]

And you still don't need MLODs for that either ;)

i didn't say that you would. but it's kind of obvious that if BI decide to add some of the perfectly fine anim configs and anims for females they have lying around that they will come with models that use them. not mlods though. but with a similar tools like we use for the male skeleton now (finally since arma 3) we could achieve a lot.

Exactly, everything is much harder to achieve to the A3 standard

we've been making models using the super shader/normal maps for years now. not much has changed. i see no one complain about quality of addons. the difference now is that with the "magic" of the weighting plugin vespa provided it's not an unnecessary nightmare to make entirely new characters anymore. different story for new skeletons though (as far as i can tell from my tests). making a huge amount of anims is way more work and way harder because with crappy/limited tools it's simply impossible to make them look natural. not so much for models like vehicles and weapons etc. two different things. you can never compete with mocap.

To be fair, no one ever achieved that for OFP either...

you are so helpful making my point :p

that's why the following you said is true in it's nostalgia but still not the cure for the problem here:

Still, you don't need to be spoon fed MLODs, tutorials, tools or whatever in order to achieve anything - again, in the OFP days many people wrote their own tools. Something the "community" seems mostly incapable of doing these days

i'm not arguing for female soldiers from a political perspective or someone who's to lazy to put work in to make mods. it's just a realistic view on what is possible and how tools and provided assets to build on are a key reason for how possible, or not possible for that matter. i know this thread is predestined for it but extremes never help getting to the core of the problem. sure there are a lot of helpless people asking for tuts but there are also a lot of people still actively modding and getting shit done with the few things we have at our disposal.

just saying :P

[jiltedjock 10]

And by then, Arma 3 was already too far along it's development cycle to suddenly switch such an important part of the foundation of the game.

You have zero insight on the development process. Do you even know what you mean by this? I speak as someone who actually works in software development. I'm prepared to accept that Disney have let you carry a gun on patrol at some point so why not stick to posting about those and leave comments about software development to those that have experience in it? It seems pretty clear to me that BI are using CI methodologies which are entirely flexible enough to have allowed them to incorporate a change like this, had they wished to.

Edited October 28, 2013 by jiltedjock

[alleycat 28]

except for each single game in this series until now.

while your spandex argument is intriguing i personally wouldn't find it great to have some limited females that can't operate weapons (like in the past) a deal breaker. the thing is, if you provide a huge realistic terrain but don't provide civilian population you end up with a dead game world. simple as that. just because BI seem to refuse to place a single civilian in their missions doesn't mean the main content contributer (the community) doesn't do so.

my theory is that the females we had (even the whole anim config was in the arma 3 files until recently) were another victim of BI's new ridiculous "if it can't be perfect we just cut it entirely"-policy. to me, like with many other issues, saying that "people" will still complain when it'S not fully fleshed out or perfect, is nonsense. some people are never happy. that's hardly a reason to remove everything from the game that doesn't meet their standards. arma is a military game. you could have females just as civilians with the old anims very easily by porting the skeleton like it was done with males. not doing so just because some people want fully functional female soldiers is idiotic.

arma is imperfection by definition. if you would cut it down to everything that works flawlessly you wouldn't be left with much game to play.

the whole "there are no females playing this game" argument is silly. this is not a RPG with custom avatar creation. it's about having a gameworld that somewhat resembles reality. if females aren't part of yours doesn't mean it's true for everyone else sure it's easier to argue by stretching everything to extremes all the time but it's also childish and not constructive.

for me the problem is not that the game doesn't function without it but rather that it would be easy to add it like it was added in the past and that it was removed. it doesn't have to be perfect at all. something is better than nothing. especially in game that calls itself a sandbox/platform.

1. Community is not the main contributor. Because retexturing existing models or making missions with a mission editor is 500 million times easier than doing actual work. Actual work being, custom models made from scratch. Then uv-mapped, textured, weightpainted, rigged, exported, coded. Do you see why there is so many so called mods that just repaint existing camo patterns and slap their favorite country's flag on it and celebrate themselves as champions of the community that complete the game.

Let me put this in a metaphore. Making custom assets from scratch is chiseling a statue out of marble. Retexturing existing stuff is folding a paper plane. So stick that "main content contributor" argument where the sun dont shine. BI made the game, they created 99,9999% of all content that will ever exist for arma3.

2. Who the hell cares about civilians?

I agree with you it is an incredible amount of work to add females to the game. The issue I see is why is this being looked at as an after thought? Most creative circles would have made provisions to allow this to work from the start. Like you said its not that much different from ARMA 2 we have proven that most things can be ported surely the guys with the actual SDK and tools to use more high end programs could do it.

FEMALES DONT MATTER IN ARMA3. BECAUSE ITS A GAME WHERE YOU SHOOT GUYS ON 500m AND ON THAT DISTANCE YOU CANT TELL IF THE 5pixel high THING YOU SHOOT AT HAS BREASTS

Edited October 29, 2013 by alleycat

[PN11A 2]

1. Community is not the main contributor. Because retexturing existing models or making missions with a mission editor is 500 million times easier than doing actual work. Actual work being, custom models made from scratch. Then uv-mapped, textured, weightpainted, rigged, exported, coded. Do you see why there is so many so called mods that just repaint existing camo patterns and slap their favorite country's flag on it and celebrate themselves as champions of the community that complete the game.

Let me put this in a metaphore. Making custom assets from scratch is chiseling a statue out of marble. Retexturing existing stuff is folding a paper plane. So stick that "main content contributor" argument where the sun dont shine. BI made the game, they created 99,9999% of all content that will ever exist for arma3.

2. Who the hell cares about civilians?

I agree with you it is an incredible amount of work to add females to the game. The issue I see is why is this being looked at as an after thought? Most creative circles would have made provisions to allow this to work from the start. Like you said its not that much different from ARMA 2 we have proven that most things can be ported surely the guys with the actual SDK and tools to use more high end programs could do it.

FEMALES DONT MATTER IN ARMA3. BECAUSE ITS A GAME WHERE YOU SHOOT GUYS ON 500m AND ON THAT DISTANCE YOU CANT TELL IF THE 5pixel high THING YOU SHOOT AT HAS BREASTS

Everyone doesn't play the game that way sorry to inform you that there are modules out there that take into account a broad aspect of game play.

Also the pipeline of creating an assets for games is split between artist. There is one person who models and uv, another person who textures, another person who rigs and another person who animates. Also if you look at bensons track record along with some others in this thread you can see they do more than retexture. I personally have been creating 3d models, and trying to get them in arms 3 for a while and it takes people like benson, gnat, ard, and others to help get it done.

[roshnak 41]

Stuff about workload and pixels and stuff

This is weird because you have made a really good argument for why women should be in the game and some really, really bad arguments for why they shouldn't.

Also the pipeline of creating an assets for games is split between artist. There is one person who models and uv, another person who textures, another person who rigs and another person who animates. Also if you look at bensons track record along with some others in this thread you can see they do more than retexture. I personally have been creating 3d models, and trying to get them in arms 3 for a while and it takes people like benson, gnat, ard, and others to help get it done.

Two points. First, this is kind of an old way of dividing workload. There are a ton of artists these days who at the very least model, unwrap and texture their own models. Second, the vast majority of content put out for the arma series is either retextures or content that was originally created for Operation Flashpoint or ARMA 1. There are few models that have survived in this community for a disgustingly long time. Then again, BIS set the example, the rest of us may as well follow it, right?

P.S. Before anyone gets mad, there are indeed several people in the community who put out high quality, brand new content.

Edit: And furthermore, when one of the main selling points of your game is how much great community made content there is, you should try to make it as easy as possible for people make more of that content, not rely on the community to teach each other how to mod your game.

And also I think women should be in arma 3 I am totally on topic right now.

Edited October 29, 2013 by roshnak

[lao fei mao 21]

:yay:We need woman, women and sexy ladies.

[alleycat 28]

Also the pipeline of creating an assets for games is split between artist. There is one person who models and uv, another person who textures, another person who rigs and another person who animates. Also if you look at bensons track record along with some others in this thread you can see they do more than retexture. I personally have been creating 3d models, and trying to get them in arms 3 for a while and it takes people like benson, gnat, ard, and others to help get it done.

No its not split like this. At least the model artist is also the guy who UV maps the model (or the texture artist). But most likely a pro artist does modeling, UV, texturing by himself.

And you HAVE to figure out stuff (with the help of others if needed ) if you want to get it exported into the game. Because getting stuff exported is that overlooked hard stuff that no one will thank you for. You cant just do the fun part of making a model and rely on others to do the hard frustrating exporting (getting it into the game) and then call yourself a pro modder. However asking for help so you can learn how to do it is legit. But constantly relying on someone to do the hard not fun exporting stuff for you is just fail modding (I am not accusing you of that, just talking about it general).

Edit: And furthermore, when one of the main selling points of your game is how much great community made content there is, you should try to make it as easy as possible for people make more of that content, not rely on the community to teach each other how to mod your game.

Making missions is already very easy. Making custom assets is easy enough if you know what you are doing. You cant hate on BI for the fact that creating new models and all the work involved with it is HARD work and requires frustration tolerance. So, making new "content" is already easy enough.

Edited October 29, 2013 by alleycat

[Tacti-Cool 10]

I think that female models should have been included with Armies that allow female combat soldiers, I.e. for the US, there wouldnt be any but in the future there are going to (hopefully) be more armies and factions. It would have been nice to see Female Ammo bearers and supply truck drivers, maybe even combat lifesavers.

[dunedain 48]

The game uses Israeli vehicles. The Israeli army has women in it. It's all the backwards Americans (not all but some people) arguing women can't serve beside men in conflicts. It's ridiculous to think a militery wouldn't want to have access to double the size of their army.

Israel has to prepare women for warfare because of their geopolitical situation which is precarious to say the least. Israel isn't a faction in the game as far as I know anyway. The vast majority of countries with active combat units do not allow women in infantry roles because they couldn't even complete basic infantry training and those who could would just end up being a liability for their units anyway. That's common sense, and the reality of gender differences. Feminists in the US argue that physical requirements should be lowered, which is utterly insane... Don't be so eager to call people backwards, while you're just talking out of your dogmatic ass.

This being said, I'm not against women in Arma games, it does makes sense for women to be involved in combat when your country is invaded and it of course happened in the past. So at least female civilians capable of using weapons would be great. However having women among NATO or Iranian infantry troops would just be another step into that gaping hole that is political correctness. This ain't CoD or Battlefield...

Edited October 29, 2013 by dunedain
typos

[bad benson 1733]

@allycat: you seem like an angry fella. i don't know why you hate boobs so much ;) but lots of what you said is straight BS. the community makes way more content than BI. it's not an accusation. it's a fact. it's one of the major selling points of the game. so they need better tools and assets to build on. period. your remark about reskins is kind of unprecise since i was talking about everything and not just characters. and i explained the reasons why there aren't as many characters as other stuff. so pretty much none of what you said makes any sense. besides.

http://www.vojak.si/photos/alien_vision.jpg

http://www.armedassault.info/ftp/pics/news/pics1/greenberets25new03.jpg

i made both of these. you have no idea how much works it was. so please don't preach about who does "the real work" when you have not even half a clue what you're talking about. as you can see on the alien the results from weighting with o2 are horrible unless you want to put years in or make an exact copy of the BI soldier. character modelling is a way faster process in other engines. since vespa gave us a new plugin we can now weight very fast and well since we can use proper software. this is new and a game changer. as far as i can see the plugin is limited to the male skeleton. so it's still far from the freedom any other SDK provides. i could explain (and repeat) more but i'm done with this moronic BS. have fun raging over nothing. :rolleyes:

[roshnak 41]

Making missions is already very easy. Making custom assets is easy enough if you know what you are doing. You cant hate on BI for the fact that creating new models and all the work involved with it is HARD work and requires frustration tolerance. So, making new "content" is already easy enough.

I can definitely blame BI for releasing crappy tools and not documenting basically anything ever.

[Kerc Kasha 102]

Oh boy I'm sure glad this thread hasn't changed at all from the one that existed in the Alpha with the same exact posts posted over and over again. With stellar performances such as:

hurr the only people that want it just want to be/to have scantly clad women

women are useless in combat situations blah blah distraction

women are inferior to men what do you mean? that isnt sexist at all

Women serve in the military, they have done so since the dawn of time. It hasn't been consistent, no, but it has happened quite a lot, usually in straight up combat roles, such as the Soviet army that had female snipers, tank crew, AA gunners etc etc.

But even if we ignore that, believe it or not female civilians do exist and they don't in arma 3. And even a copy paste from arma 2 would be better than that.

[chops 111]

Aside from the argument that it'd be more work for BIS (isn't that their job?) there's no logical reason women shouldn't be in Arma III. A meticulously crafted island like Altis is rendered significantly less immersive if half the civilian population is missing, IMHO.

[alleycat 28]

@allycat: you seem like an angry fella. i don't know why you hate boobs so much but lots of what you said is straight BS. the community makes way more content than BI. it's not an accusation. it's a fact. it's one of the major selling points of the game. so they need better tools and assets to build on. period. your remark about reskins is kind of unprecise since i was talking about everything and not just characters. and i explained the reasons why there aren't as many characters as other stuff. so pretty much none of what you said makes any sense. besides.

http://www.vojak.si/photos/alien_vision.jpg

http://www.armedassault.info/ftp/pic...ets25new03.jpg

i made both of these. you have no idea how much works it was. so please don't preach about who does "the real work" when you have not even half a clue what you're talking about. as you can see on the alien the results from weighting with o2 are horrible unless you want to put years in or make an exact copy of the BI soldier. character modelling is a way faster process in other engines. since vespa gave us a new plugin we can now weight very fast and well since we can use proper software. this is new and a game changer. as far as i can see the plugin is limited to the male skeleton. so it's still far from the freedom any other SDK provides. i could explain (and repeat) more but i'm done with this moronic BS. have fun raging over nothing.

A pro artist does not complain about an automatic weighting tool not working 100%, he paints the weights manually. Spending time to fine tune the weight is part of the work. Also looking at the elbows of your alien creature your weighting skills need some work.

Also you are wrong about the community making more content. BI made the skeleton and all the animations that all character modding artists try to attach their models too. And if you would have any idea how much work that animation system was you would see that this outweighs most community work. BI made the game and all the important core content of which all other mods are based on and without it they would just be nice screenshots in a modeling forum. And dont start with this "community completes broken arma game" followed by "I am so great at weighting but the official tools failed me".

New mods are a nice addition but I did not buy arma for the mods for the most part mods do not reach the quality of the official arma assets, which is nothing bad as BI artists are paid professionals and the modders doing it in their free time are not getting paid.