TPW MODS: enhanced realism and immersion for Arma 3 SP.

[gliptal 25]

TPW SETTINGS

[1.6.0]

- more descriptive HUD names

- added color chooser for HUD

Important README edits:

USAGE:

- COLOR CHOOSER

+ The sliders can be used to select the wanted color

+ In the top field the relative values are shown: simply copy (CTRL-C) and paste (CTRL-V) the string in the desired parameter field to have that color in your HUD

LIMITATIONS:

- The only way to copy values from one field to another is using keyboard shortcuts (CTRL-C and CTRL-V), since the right mouse button dropdown menu isn't available in Java.

- Closing the HUD window using the top right hand corner 'X' will not automatically close the color chooser, unlike the 'BACK' button.

NEXT STEPS:

1. Nicer color chooser UI2. HUD live preview

3. Inserted value check

The README was completely rewritten and expanded, you may want to take another look at it.

---

Have you ever found yourself wondering what values correspond to what colors when dealing with relative {R,G,B} formatted strings? I have now added a color chooser that opens with the HUD mod section, that lets you use sliders to preview colors. You can then copy and paste (keyboard shortcuts only) the correct {R,G,B} values in the parameter field, and be set.

Yay!

[tpw 2311]

Lately had some time to try HUD after few updates - wow. Awesome thing. :) I can confirm observation about marks covering the target however. Played also with falling under fire feature (great update lately, constant knockdown-getting up "dance" was annoying earlier), and on the close range I was even unable to determine, if eg. unit is fallen to the ground or not due to huge at this range unit mark + targeting mark. I was shooting half-blindly. IMO marks should point the target, but not cover it - should help during firefight, not hinder. Perhaps those diamonds should be big enough to encase whole unit within when distance is far/medium? And perhaps should have lowered seriously max size/line thickness to not veil units, when close? Last thing to report is from my RPT:

Did not used marker feature for HUD, but there was markers present on map.

Thanks for the RPT stuff, I'll look into it. As for the icons, while you're waiting for me to do something I suggest 1 - make them smaller yourself, 2 you do know that they rotate to indicate that a unit is prone or kneeling right?

---------- Post added at 05:53 ---------- Previous post was at 05:52 ----------

TPW SETTINGS

Important README edits:

The README was completely rewritten and expanded, you may want to take another look at it.

---

Have you ever found yourself wondering what values correspond to what colors when dealing with relative {R,G,B} formatted strings? I have now added a color chooser that opens with the HUD mod section, that lets you use sliders to preview colors. You can then copy and paste (keyboard shortcuts only) the correct {R,G,B} values in the parameter field, and be set.

Yay!

Simply awesome!

[oldy41 61]

@tpw:

Thanks again for the new version. With the modified timings for AI 'downtime' it feels even better.

And now, like you might have supected ;), yet another improvement suggestion:

I am using tpw_fall with ragdolls disabled, since I have the impression that this gives less visual glitches when knocked down units are killed.

Now with ragdolls disabled it happens that AI units, which are knocked down into side prone seem to glide on the ground while returning fire. This looks rather wierd, since no movement animation is played at all. I assume the reason is, that the engine itself has no code for AI units in side prone at all, much less for moving in side prone.

I am not sure though what can be done about that.

- Maybe do not use side prone for knocking down AI? (On the other hand, as long as they do not move it really looks cool when they return fire in side prone.)

- Or maybe prevent them from moving while side prone?

(My relentless naging here simply serves my overall master plan to make you bring tpw_fall even closer to perfection. :D )

[tpw 2311]

@tpw:

Thanks again for the new version. With the modified timings for AI 'downtime' it feels even better.

And now, like you might have supected ;), yet another improvement suggestion:

I am using tpw_fall with ragdolls disabled, since I have the impression that this gives less visual glitches when knocked down units are killed.

Now with ragdolls disabled it happens that AI units, which are knocked down into side prone seem to glide on the ground while returning fire. This looks rather wierd, since no movement animation is played at all. I assume the reason is, that the engine itself has no code for AI units in side prone at all, much less for moving in side prone.

I am not sure though what can be done about that.

- Maybe do not use side prone for knocking down AI? (On the other hand, as long as they do not move it really looks cool when they return fire in side prone.)

- Or maybe prevent them from moving while side prone?

(My relentless naging here simply serves my overall master plan to make you bring tpw_fall even closer to perfection. :D )

Thanks oldy41, I will look into disabling movement on these guys.

EDIT: Looked into it, it seems to be some kind of engine bug. I tried

_unit disableai "move";
	_unit disableai "anim";
	_unit disableai "fsm";
	_unit disableai "target";
	_unit disableai "autotarget";

and they just slide along the ground when down from an animated fall. I've not seen this before , it might be a recent introduction.

Edited May 9, 2014 by tpw

[Rydygier 1302]

1 - make them smaller yourself

Ah yes, stupid me. This solves one of described matters. Another tiny idea to make visual on enemy better (and improve performance slightly) could be to showing targeting mark (one of my favorite HUD parts!) only for targets, that actually are in the move or, to be more precise, if proper targeting point isn't located on target's silhuette.

2 you do know that they rotate to indicate that a unit is prone or kneeling right?

Yep, another great feature. Sometimes however knowledge about unit's stance, while unit itself is not quite visible due to marker on it, is not enough to know, at which point should I send my bullets. I tried to think about this HUD design in terms of RL: would real Army buy and introduce for soldiers such HUD? My answer was: no, as long there are circumstancies, where markers can make things (like hitting the enemy, thus it is about basic survival on the battlefield, question of life and death) harder instead of easier. I'm not certain really, if this can be done better, you did tests, you know more, than I. Even if marker will be a frame around the target, not veiling it, it still may veil other near targets, so it is hard to solve. I'll experiment with more transparency. Distance will be hard to read then, and marker obviously less visible, but that is not primary concern.

Also, this may be not good idea at all, but if possible and not too complex, may be considered improving targeting mark with also distance amendment by taking into account also zeroing of current sighting/aiming device and maybe even ballistic of used ammo (wind influence?), so in the effect targeting mark will point not where in screen coords space target will be at bullet impact, but where soldier in given moment should point center of his crosshairs and pull the trigger to make a hit. Again - it may be bad idea, at least for the game, in RL such thing should be apprfeciated by the military :) .

Edited May 9, 2014 by Rydygier

[orcinus 121]

Hi tpw

Thanks for the updates. Still rather bogged down with RL issues but will be getting back into ArmA during the next week.

I take your point about the addition of tactical glasses to enable tpw-HUD potentially unbalancing other peoples missions - however IMHO it's a nice option to have if a mission seems to enemy-weighted or gets broken by BIS updates (as, from posts I've read today, some of their own missions may have been).

@Ryd - there's actually a system available that attempts to do that sort of 'predictive aiming'. IIRC it locks the trigger until the sights are appropriately aligned with the target. Worryingly, the American company (whose name escapes me) is offering to sell it to civilians as well as military/cops.

Cheers

Orc

[kremator 1064]

You see, if that technology exists now (tagging then autofire) then it should definately exist in 2035 in Arma3.

Personally, I won't play a mission now unless tpw_hud is enabled.

[Brainbug 10]

TPW, maybe you can make a config option for different markers, e.g. 0 for your diamond, 1 for "my" brackets, 2 for something else you might think up etc. Then people can decide what they like better.

@Brainbug: Any chance you could make a couple of similar screenshots (one with the HUD at default settings, one on the same scene without HUD)? My RIG is currently uncapable of running A3.

Well, actually, that pic was taken with default HUD settings, and with a deactivated HUD there would be nothing at all on the pic, well except maybe the "dev build" stuff in the corner.

[...]Worryingly, the American company (whose name escapes me) is offering to sell it to civilians as well as military/cops.

I do appreciate the fact that there is a wide ocean between me and those "civilians" (that are by average better armed than the soldiers we send to A-Stan or elsewhere)...

[tpw 2311]

Hi all

As per Orcinus, RL has got in the way of A3 coding lately, but I have been working on a few things, mainly related to addressing various HUD issues such as clutter, aesthetics etc:

The targetting icon no longer appears over stationary or slow moving targets. You should only see it when it lies outside the unit's icon. This certainly results in less obscuring of stationary targets.

Several people have whinged about my choice of icons, as though it was a simple case of bad judgement on my part. The present system uses a single icon which is scaled by the engine. This meant that I had to do a lot of work on a compromise antialiased icon which didn't look too thick up close, and didn't disappear at distance. While I'm sure the gold standard is nice crisp 1 or 2 pixel thick icons, these look shit when scaled down. The alternatives are either to make multiple icons for the different distances (too much work) or to construct icons on the fly. I've been looking into the latter, and have had some success implementing these dynamic icons out of corner pieces. It certainly works and has the bonus that the icon fits the unit regardless of zoom. However this method is quite a lot heavier, because I have to display 4 icons per unit and do far more per frame calculating.

These experiments may or may not amount to much. In the mean time, if my current implementation (which I happen to like) causes you too much angst then consider 1) making the icons smaller and non scaleable, so that they appear only as dots over the target's centre of mass, 2) decreasing the HUD brightness so that icons obscure less, 3) creating your own icons (white on transparent 32x32 png) and sending them to me for evaluation, or 4) using another HUD mod.

[Brainbug 10]

Ok then, less whinging and a bit more action from my side. Concerning your given options: 1) is not an improvement since they would still be exactly where I don't want them (same reason I don't like red dot reticles), 2) is not so great because I want a noticable visual alert if a contact is in vicinity, and 4) really, you think I'd find a better mod than yours? ;) So I've tried 3) and made those (these are PNGs that you can d/l and covert to paa):

For "unit" and "predictor" respectively (you could adjust the other icons accordingly, but they are of no concern and fine as they are; and making the bars 3 pixels thick instead of my 2 pixels would be no problem either)

The result looks quite ok, I'd say (default userconfig settings on the screenshot below). Maybe the thinner border is harder to recognize when looking casually around, but to notice a contact you still have the quite obvious distance figure. Less transparency and a different color than orange might make it stand out better because the environment color is quite close to orange as well, but to change that is of course up to the user already.

Rectagular shapes are quite unproblematic in regards to aliasing (up to a certain degree of course), so a bit thinner shouldn't be a problem here. And frankly, you can't be too much considerate of people playing in low res without any antialiasing, their game will look shitty anyway. What you could do however is to increase the size of the icons a bit (or even better put the scale values into the userconfig), that is not a problem anymore when the icon does not obstruct the target. Then the distant small-scaled icons will not start to flicker or disappear partly. Could be twice the size easily.

Oh, and apart from that, an option to show friendly military in a different color (blue?) than civilians would be great, as well as showing dead bodies (in black/grey; however I'm not sure if the latter is technical possible at all).

Edited May 13, 2014 by Brainbug

[tpw 2311]

Thanks Brainbug, this is awesome, and I appreciate your proactive stance. Your PNGs are actually pretty similar to what I've come up with, meaning they will probably require some fiddling of scaling parameters so that they don't look crap at >200m. My "hybrid" icon actually consists of an icon representing each corner of your first "unit" icon. So the overall icon scales with distance but the thickness remains the same. More importantly, they scale with zoom. However as mentioned they are heavier on the system. I will keep plugging away at both.

Dead units are easily doable (foreach alldead). I just haven't bothered with them to this point because I didn't think it added anything.

Progress might be a bit slower over the next few weeks unfortunately.

[Brainbug 10]

well in some missions/situations it is imperative to find bodies, and even if you have set terrain details to low (i.e. no vegetation clutter at all) they can be pretty hard to spot. Would be nice to have the option to show them (something very unobtrusive would do fine).

[heyvern69 22]

Hey TPW . . . killer-cool work on the whole mod, and especially the HUD and it's icons. I love it.

I know it's frustrating trying to please a million people with a million different desires, but you're doing FANTASTIC. We appreciate all your hard work.

Seriously dude, you have the patience of a saint!

an option to show friendly military in a different color (blue?) than civilians would be great.

I LIKE that idea. Perhaps just separate the colors for (1) friendly military, (2) independent military, (3) civilian and (4) enemy military. (Did I miss any group categories?)

My favorite feature is the (!!my_text) for sharing markers with other players. But I have a few friends who won't use this HUD mod because they think it's cheating to see markers which display where enemy units are. I'm trying to convince them to use this mod because of all the tweak options to show or hide various elements, but I haven't yet convinced these 3 guys. This leads me to a question ---> Is it possible to do the following 3 things:

1) Display the HUD data in the lower right corner (time, compass, grid, etc.), but also

2) Hide the diamond & bracket markers (with range numbers), AND also

3) still see the custom typed (!!my_text) markers.

It looks like there's an option to hide #2(markers), but it will also hide #3 (!!my-text). I want to keep 1 and 3 but hide 2.

Does anyone know if it's possible? Thanks.

-V

[PartyHead 10]

The hud is cheating.

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

The hud is cheating.

Wayne. The mod is SP only and by the way: AI is cheating too.

[Brainbug 10]

@ PartyHead: 1985 on Everon? Certainly. 2035 on Altis? Doubt it (think Google glasses plus 20 years and we are probably way beyond this). If you don't like it, don't use it, don't play on servers that allow it (although I think TWP mods is mainly a SP thing anyway because of the extra stress it puts on performance, that would be a good way to bring a server to its knees).

@ heyvern69: tell everyone in your group to set the tpw_hud_range[] array to a number that will not show any units, i.e. first number higher than the drawing distance for units, e.g. 10000 instead of the default 25. Could also be that it is already enough to set the second number lower or at least on the same value than the first one, so a {0,0} would do fine. OR you could set the

But these config changes are voluntarily, if someone really wanted to cheat, he could set it differently and you wouldn't notice, so this is a trust thing without a means to control it (or can you read out a userconfig setting from the server?).

And now something completely different: Can TPW also use cars from addons to make random civs drive around, and if so which ones would be suitable?

[snowingjimbob 34]

Hey TPW, awesome work here, this mod makes Arma alive. Have you ever thought of changing the crosshair to maybe just a small dot instead of the default cross? Maybe even have the crosshair be the same as the reticule you're using? Just an idea... I do not like the default crosshair. Thanks for your dedication to this mod.

[heyvern69 22]

@ heyvern69: tell everyone in your group to set the tpw_hud_range[] array to a number that will not show any units

Cool. That partially works, but I still see brackets (and range numbers) on vehicles.

Thanks!

-V

[PartyHead 10]

@Brainbug I didn't say that I use it did I. I just agreed with your mates that it is cheating and simplifies the game play. IMHO.

[Brainbug 10]

yes, and then what? Thanks to BIS' good system of signed addons you don't have to worry about playing against people that use it, as I doubt many servers will allow it (as server admin I would mainly worry about the extra server load or other weird stuff it might cause if some people use it and randomly create AI vehicles driving around etc.). So certainly it makes playing easier for people that use it, but what do you care?

btw, telling someone that he is cheating or his addon is a cheat is quite offensive, so don't be surprised to receive a reaction.

[tpw 2311]

Brainbug, I just assume that players and server admins can read the initialism SP in the thread title, and the multiple references to this being an SP only mod. That makes it pretty easy for me to ignore the various rude and/or overentitled non-contributors who complain about it impacting their MP experience (cheating, performance, unexpected behaviour etc etc).

I am slowly preparing a set of alternative icons and the hpp entries so that people can choose their preferred icons. I'm also experimenting with allowing people to load in their own icons from the TPW_MODS userconfig directory.

Re custom cars, I will look into a similar system to that employed by TPW AIR, which uses any aircraft it can find in the config.

[snowingjimbob 34]

I'm getting this pop up (bis_FNC_groupvehicles)parameter GROUP must not be null, (OBJECT or GROUP) required

Any ideas? I probably screwed up the user config or something...

[LSD_Timewarp82 21]

And i get this message when activating playing the devbranch, in stablebranch the same, the log is full of this:

File TPW_MODS\tpw_hud.sqf, line 843

Error in expression <w_hud_nearunits select _ct;

if (!isnull _unit) then

{

_status = "hidden";

_sc>

Error position: <_unit) then

{

_status = "hidden";

_sc>

Error Undefined variable in expression: _unit

What should i do to fix that?

[tpw 2311]

Thanks LSD, I will look into these

[heyvern69 22]

I am slowly preparing a set of alternative icons and the hpp entries so that people can choose their preferred icons.

Just had an idea. Would it be possible to have an extra icon that is blank (transparent), so that if you don't want a particular hud element, you could replace an icon that you don't want to see, with an "invisible icon" of the same name? So not only can you choose your preferred icon, you could also choose a "no icon" option. ? ? ? Just a thought. Ignore it if the idea is stupid.

-V